


Toeing the Line

by Minette



Series: The Line [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: A bit of masturbation, A lot of hitting, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, BDSM, Childhood Abuse, Consent, Consent Issues, Divorce, Dom/sub Play, Gen, Id Fic, Impact Play, No Romance, No Sex, Sadomasochism, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, platonic kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 32,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minette/pseuds/Minette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's something called the hypothalamic region of the limbic system," Reid tells Chester Hardwicke in his prison cell. (Hotch stands by, spoiling for a fight but forestalled by Reid's penchant for talking serial killers into submission.) "It's the most primitive part of the brain. It wants what it wants without conscience and without judgment."</p><p>On the road home afterwards, Hotch admits struggling with his impending divorce. And Reid suggests a way for them both to get what they want — or at least what they want when they can't get what they really want.</p><p>AKA: Hotch wants what he can't get. Reid gets what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because it's worth pulling out of tags, what I mean by 'platonic kink' is: there will be no sex, nor romance. Just a bunch of consensual violence and also angst. Where the characters consider or discuss sex it's because they're still working out this whole platonic kink thing too. Basically if you want sex then you'll need to imagine your own or leave disappointed; however if you enjoy bdsm and/or consent play for their own sake then this may be your jam.
> 
> This is completed at 20 chapters — I'll post a part a day. Full disclosure: it's also the first part of a hypothetical trilogy, but I'm a slow and easily distractible writer so, though I've got notes for them, there's no guarantee that I'll ever finish (or even start) the sequels. However this part does stand alone as best as I can make it within the constraints of canon.

"What if," Reid says, and licks his lips, "you could get part of what you want — I mean, what you want when you can't get what you _really_ want."

What Hotch wants, with Haley and Jack leaving his life, is to pound his fist into someone's face and hear them whimper — but he can't have that either. Letting Chester Hardwicke provoke him into a fight in his prison cell would never have helped anything. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Reid says, "what I _really_ want is for it all to have never happened. But since it did, I want someone I trust to hurt me in a way I can control."

It's the nearest he's alluded to still struggling with the aftermath of what Tobias Hankel did to him, so Hotch should be saying the right thing. But something catches in his pulse and the only words he can think are Reid's _hurt me_.

And Reid pushes on: "And I— I think you want to hurt someone you can trust to stop you if you lose control."

He should be saying no, but something catches in his chest and his vision shifts. The road in front of him is sharp and clear, the farmland in his periphery turning dark and fuzzy. _Hurt me_.

But he hasn't lost control yet. "I think we should change the subject."

"But I'm right, aren't I?"

"Reid," he says firmly, "that's enough."

Reid falls silent, and he watches the road and concentrates on the road and drives along the road and wishes—

"I don't think you really want me to stop talking."

"Shut up, Reid."

It's very much the wrong thing to say, because it brings up all the wrong memories even before Reid says, "You'd like to kick me again."

He pulls over. Too abruptly: the seatbelt digs into his chest and beside him Reid clutches at the door for balance. He keeps his eyes forward as his pulse hammers in his ears, and grits out, "That was only to save all our lives, and I didn't take any pleasure from it. And don't try to tell me you did. You're not that good an actor."

"No, but things have changed. For both of us. Technically," he adds as Hotch unbuckles his seatbelt, "I wouldn't derive pleasure from the pain so much as, uh, satisfaction from controlling the manner of its delivery."

He swings out into the fresh air and slams the door shut behind him. It rocks the SUV; he imagines it rocking Reid, and shakes his head and strides away as if he can just walk back to DC.

Reid follows him. "I want you to hit me."

He turns back. He needs to stop this, now. "It doesn't matter what either of us wants, Reid. It's not going to happen. So drop it and get back in the car."

Reid steps forward, chin up and determined to hold Hotch's gaze though his eyes are trying to be elsewhere: justified nerves and damnfool bravery. "Not until you hit me."

"I'm not doing that."

"Just hit me."

"Stop it."

"Make me," he says, and his chin is right there: Hotch can imagine the solid crack it would make, and feels his fist clench, and has to remind himself it would bruise and the whole team would ask questions and Reid just isn't that good an actor. "Make me stop talking," he says, and Hotch imagines how his mouth would— _Knows_ it would split and bruise just the same. "I won't stop talking until you hit me," he says, and Hotch has just had a convincing demonstration of how long and fluently Reid can talk, even if right now his eloquence boils down to, "Hit me. Just hit me once. Hit me."

He shakes his head, but his fist's clenched so tight it's trembling. He can't, mustn't do this, but Reid just won't stop. He won't stop until Hotch makes him; hits him.

"Hurt me," he says.

And Hotch draws his fist back and drives it into his solar plexus. It's soft and hard and all Reid's breath leaves him in a surprised cough. He doubles over in blessed silence, and Hotch feels the rush, the relief, the release, in his own departing breath.

And the guilt.

Reid lifts a fluttering hand to sign something. Hotch doesn't want to see it: is afraid it might be _again_. He grabs his arm above the elbow and steers him back to the car; opens the door and puts him inside. Reid manages his own seatbelt, though he's struggling for little gulps of breath, goldfishlike. Hotch does his best to ignore it, ignore what it does to him to know that he did that. He gets back in his own seat and drives, eyes ahead. Drives and listens to the little gasps, and to the husky, "Thank you."

*

That night he signs the marital settlement agreement and puts it in the outgoing mail.

And then he reaches for the phone on his desk— And draws back, because what is he thinking, making a call like that from his work phone? Stares at his thumb hovering over his cellphone: what is he thinking, making a call like that at all?

He needs out of here.

He tosses a stack of files into his briefcase and drives to his apartment. He should start thinking of it as 'home', he supposes, but he's still more or less living out of suitcases and, when he walks in the door, he swears his steps _echo_ from bare to sterile wall.

Wilfully overriding his better judgement he calls Reid.

"Hotch?"

Reid's voice is uncertain, and Hotch immediately decides that the only reason he made this call was to put an end to it all. He says, "We need to talk."

The uncertainty segues into curiosity. "Talk, or—"

"Talk," he cuts in firmly, but has to close his eyes. He doesn't need to hear Reid's words to know what they were going to be. _Hit me._

"Okay," Reid says as if he doesn't believe it and doesn't care.

Hotch isn't sure he believes it either. He makes sure he's breathing steadily and says, "If anything else happens I'll put in for a transfer before I go to bed tonight."

There's a small pause. "You're not at the BAU," Reid deduces, either because Hotch wouldn't do this (there _is_ no 'this') in his office or because he didn't say 'before I go home'. "How long will it take you to get here?"

Hotch shakes his head. "My apartment," he says, and recites the address and hangs up before Reid can argue.


	2. Chapter 2

He's just poured the coffee when the doorbell rings. "It's open," he calls, and brings the mugs out as Reid lets himself in. His own mug on one side of the table, by the kitchen; Reid's on the other, clear path to the door. "I already added sugar."

"Thanks." His eyes dart around the apartment. It came furnished, down to the bland landscapes on the wall. There's not much else to profile, which is profile enough. He collects the mug, but instead of sitting down there he takes it to the sofa, as if he thinks that's where Hotch plans to talk. He knows very well that Hotch meant the table for a barrier, one to protect both of them, and he thinks by ignoring it he can draw him out.

Hotch sits deliberately where he is. This is his apartment, his ground, and — when, rather than cave and return, Reid perches on the arm of the sofa — the extra distance between them is all to the better. He asks, "Are you alright?"

"It twinges a bit," Reid says honestly. That should renew Hotch's guilt, and does, but then he _smiles_. "It feels kind of good."

He holds his mug tight enough to feel the burn against his palms instead of the sense-memory of stomach against his knuckles. He's Reid's boss. He needs to end this. He needs to take responsibility. "I shouldn't have hit you."

"It's against the rules," Reid agrees, knowing Hotch doesn't care about the rules.

"It was wrong."

He purses his lips in thought like this is some freshman ethics debate. "It would be wrong if you used your rank to take advantage of me," he reasons, "but we're not going to let that happen. And it would be wrong if we let it affect the team, but we won't do that either."

Hotch notes the deliberate use of the future tense and rejects it. But he can't reject the logic. He could find other excuses. But that's all they'd be — excuses — and Reid would know it.

And he didn't after all summon Reid to his apartment at nine tonight for a conversation they could have had in the safe formality of his office at nine tomorrow morning.

He sets his coffee aside untasted and says, "Tell me what you want."

Reid meets his eyes and licks his lips and says, "You first."

He shakes his head. "My apartment, my rules."

"This isn't about me obeying you," Reid points out, as if he hadn't made that very clear on the way back from the prison today. "It's about you hurting me, and me controlling it."

He makes himself ignore the first part of that and says, very steadily, "What makes you think you can control me?"

"I did in the prison."

He tips his head. "I chose to stop."

"Because I wanted you to. Just like I wanted you to hit me on the way back."

"I chose to hit you," he objects, because he still feels more than a little sick about it. Even though his hand, flat on the table, itches to form itself into a fist again, just at the memory of it.

"I knew what you wanted and I provoked you," Reid says, and lifts his mug to the same reminiscing smile as before. "A lot. And I don't plan to leave tonight until you tell me what you want."

Hotch watches him sitting there in profile, serenely sipping at his sugar-laden coffee. No: not serenely. His fingers are interlaced around the mug, and the way he's hunched forward over it is as much nerves as earnestness. But considering the subject under discussion he might as well be a goddamned buddha.

And Hotch doesn't want to admit what he wants even to himself in the privacy of his own head, let alone speak the words aloud, to his agent, across the echoing expanse of his achingly lonely apartment. But there are only two ways to get Reid out of here otherwise. Persuasion is... not going so well, and force is out of the question. _He_ could leave — go back to the office and do paperwork until he comes to his senses — except that he's gone to great lengths to make sure that it's Reid who's nearest the door.

Fine. If he's doing this then he's doing it. He tells Reid bluntly, "I want to hit you again. Not just once, and not in the solar plexus. I want to hear it. To hear you."

Reid swallows, eyes wide and dilated. "When I tell you to," he says, and it shoots to Hotch's groin faster than anything he can imagine until Reid continues, "and you stop when I tell you to."

Struggling to maintain some semblance of self-control, Hotch reminds them both, "Not tonight. Not when we're on a case. I won't hit you where anyone might see the marks. No injuries. No implements, and no restraints."

"That's a lot about what you _don't_ want. What _do_ you want?"

He takes refuge in practicalities. "I want to meet once every week or three. I'm not suggesting a schedule, just as..." (needed) "mutually agreeable. You choose the location."

"But what do you _want_?"

"To hit you," he repeats doggedly.

"Where? How?"

He attempts a clinical frame of mind. "Punches to the ribs, front and back. Hard slaps to your legs and buttocks."

"You mean you want to spank me," Reid says with a smirk.

The seam of his pants is pressing uncomfortably, but he's not going to squirm in his seat. "Yes. And shove you down — not backwards," he amends. "Twist your arm—"

"No," Reid interrupts.

That's not something Hankel did to him. It must date back to the schoolyard. Old wounds are the worst: it's why Hotch won't even consider using a belt. "Okay," he says, and the thoughts, the words, come suddenly more easily. "Really I think it's mostly the impact that appeals to me."

"Transfer of kinetic energy," Reid translates, and extrapolates: "Kicks? Do shoes count as implements?"

He remembers the hospital two years ago like it was yesterday: towering over the writhing mass of ribs and limbs on the floor, feeling his shoe connect and hearing the gasps and muffled yelps. It was all desperate calculation at the time, and afterwards pangs of conscience and concern. But in retrospect— It's too much power, would make Reid too vulnerable, and yet he just can't say no. "Let's table that."

Reid nods again. "What else?" he asks, and Hotch notices how he's holding his mug now in his lap. Near enough to conceal, not near enough to warm. _What else?_

No. _No_. He schools himself back to something resembling cool and collected. "That about covers it."

Reid frowns in dissatisfaction and complains, "I think for this to work we're really going to need to be honest with each other."

"I've told you the truth," he returns.

"Not the whole truth."

The whole truth is that the only thing saving him from embarrassing himself is the table he's sitting at, and he's suddenly not sure how effective it is given where Reid's gone and settled. But there will be shadows, he assures himself, and so he shrugs as if he doesn't know what more Reid could possibly want him to say.

"Hotch," Reid says, in mingled solemnity and amusement, "the last person I saw with eyes that dilated had to be hospitalised with concussion."

"I haven't ruled out brain damage," Hotch says wrily.

Reid looks at him. Hotch looks back, and it's no surprise he wins the staring contest. "Okay," Reid says, extricating his fingers from the handle of his mug, and stands as awkwardly. Hotch eyes his approach, but he only sets his mug on the table and takes a step back. "Um, thanks for the coffee."

He's ending this, Hotch realises in surprise, and scrambles mentally to stop what minutes ago he'd been arguing for. "You haven't told me what _you_ want."

He pauses at the door, working one shoulder as if hitching up a satchel strap that isn't there. With a gulp of a breath he manages to meet Hotch's eyes again. "What I want doesn't matter if you're not going to be honest, so, uh... let me know if you change your mind."

And he ducks hurriedly out the door and is gone.

Hotch steels himself against frustration, so is totally unprepared for the rush of relief. With Reid gone he can let the feigned composure go. He can drop his hand to the hard heat at his crotch and squeeze. He can let himself picture — _so easily_ — if Reid had stayed — if Hotch had admitted — if he'd just grabbed him and thrown him against the wall and—

He pauses, stumbles to lock the door. And then he sits with his hand on the warmth Reid's left on the arm of the sofa and completely lets himself go.

Afterwards, cleaning himself up, he analyses the incongruous relief more deeply. Clearly he was far from unaffected by their conversation. Is this just a case of sour grapes? But if so, there should be a lingering frustration, not this deep-seated contentedness.

So was he trying to have it both ways? Use Reid for an easy thrill, be rid of him before it became too complicated — and make him do all the work of it so Hotch can stay guilt-free? But he knows cowardice. He spent months — years — making Haley miserable because he was too weak to hold up his side of the marriage and too chicken-hearted to admit the fact. Every time he ever said, "I'll make it up to you," always left a worm of shame in the back of his skull — and he has none of that tonight either.

Well, his marriage is over now. And today was... a temporary insanity, which he still thinks is a bullshit defence, but ultimately he didn't really want anything to happen. Lusted, clearly, and apparently he has a hell of a kink — so his head's screwed up, what else is new? — but safely in the realms of fantasy. He didn't want it out in the reality he has to live and work in every day, and so when Reid left he was simply and genuinely relieved.

This is its own relief, to know he can put it behind him and move on.


	3. Chapter 3

He notices a few things over the next week or three. (It depends how you count it. There's the time he takes off to spend with Jack, and days each on a few cases.)

Firstly and most importantly: Nothing changes between them at work. Once Hotch is sure the rest of the team haven't noticed anything, he finds himself completely forgetting about it for the whole day.

Secondly: This only lasts until he's on his way back to his apartment ('home', he reminds himself). Then he congratulates himself on moving on. Then he wonders if he should check that Reid has too. Sure: maybe call him over for another intimate 9pm talk, maybe let slip that whatever Hotch wants, nothing's going to happen. Unless of course Reid pushes it like he did on the way back from the prison: Hit me. Hurt me. Fuck me. —Hotch's libido has no sense of sarcasm, he discovers.

Thirdly: Reid may have days he struggles more than others, and pisses off half the alpha males in West Bune, and goes behind Hotch's back to nearly get himself killed talking down a school shooter. But apparently he also has sense enough (unlike someone Hotch looks at in the mirror each night) to be getting himself some kind of support for his problems that doesn't involve actual violence.

Fourthly: This doesn't stop him, as he's dropping a report off in Hotch's office one afternoon, from blurting out, "You know you can admit you want something without agreeing to do it." Hotch keeps writing as he retorts, "Thank you, Reid, I understand how consent works," and waits until he's back in his apartment ('home') to freak out about how Reid clearly hasn't moved on any more than Hotch has.

Fifthly: A week or three (depending on how you count it) after Hotch told Reid he wanted to meet every week or three, his daydreams about meeting again are taking a decided turn from shameful pleasure to solid plan of action.

He holds out another week. Partly trying to convince himself it's just envy of JJ's evident happiness with Will. Partly out of an honest attempt to do the right thing. Mostly from stubborn pride.

But then comes the consult in Boston, delving into the emotional abuse behind the shiny veneer of someone else's perfect marriage. And after that he can't bear to go back to his apartment (it's not a home and never will be) to wonder how much he inflicted on Haley. How much did she tolerate, thinking it was just part of being married to an FBI agent, before it grew so overwhelming, so beyond endurance, that she'd rather flee her own home with a toddler and three suitcases? And what had _Jack_ absorbed before she did?

He knocks on Reid's door instead.

Reid answers it and then is so busy gulping he forgets to say anything.

"Can we continue our conversation?" Hotch asks.

He nods quickly, and squeaks, "Monday?"

Hotch puzzles at that contradiction between eagerness and procrastination. "I was thinking now."

His head bobs again. "Tuesday?"

"You're busy?" Hotch asks sceptically. He certainly wasn't sleeping: the light was on and he's still wearing his thrift-store best, complete with skewed tie.

"No, I— I just don't want to right now, so, uh, how about Wednesday?"

"Monday's fine," Hotch says in frustration, because he can't really complain when he was the one who said _mutually agreeable_.

But Reid shakes his head and with the last of a nervous breath says, "It's next Thursday now."

It slots into place with a soft kick at his groin. He feels his nostrils flare, and in a low voice warns, "Do _not_ play games with me, Reid."

"It's not a game," he maintains, "it's a— a— a demonstration." And as Hotch's pulse hammers in his ears and he has to swallow on a growl, or a groan, before it escapes his throat, Reid adds, "I'll see you next Friday," and closes the door.

Hotch shoves his foot in first. "You'll see me _now_."

"Take your foot out of my apartment," Reid rattles out, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

Reflexively he does. The door shuts and locks. He nearly punches it.

But that would hardly convince Reid to open the door again. It would only hurt, and bruise, and tomorrow he'd have the entire team sharing looks with each other behind his back. Besides, if pounding on inanimate objects had ever made him feel better, he'd have been at the gym every day for the last half a year.

And yet his shoulders feel the most relaxed they have in weeks, and his sleep that night is free of monsters.

*

He debates through the week whether he'll comply with Reid's ultimatum. He's leaning towards no. Not out of pique: but twice he's pursued him, and twice he's only felt better for having the door shut in his face. His subconscious is telling him something and he needs to listen to it.

It's rendered moot anyway when Brian Matloff wakes up from his coma and they have to spend Friday and a large chunk of the next week revisiting the four-year-old case.

It's not a nightmare of a case: more of an anxiety dream. It's hard to dig up the past without remembering that Haley was a part of that past. And that she was jealous of Cece, not entirely without justification. With his wedding ring gone now he's caught Cece giving him a speculative look or two, and it feels like salt in the wound. Then a traitorous part of Hotch's brain wants to believe in Matloff's professed confusion, and empathise with his so-called need to understand what he is. So when the defense attorney challenges Hotch on the stand, he mercilessly _demolishes_ his argument, his credibility, and for good measure the very core of his being.

It feels good. Until he remembers that this might be a defense attorney, but he's also a human being, and he was only doing his job.

So is Hotch, he tells himself, and buckles down to do it.

Finally they wrap the case up. He turns down Cece's offer of a drink. He's ended up with Reid in his car, but keeps the conversation firmly on casework for the long drive back. And poetry, but that's related to the case too and he's almost a hundred percent certain Reid isn't reciting Wordsworth to him just for an excuse to remind him of _the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering_. Sadism was clearly the farthest thing from the poet's mind. And just as clearly too close to the front of Hotch's.

He drops Reid outside his apartment. Reid gets out and takes a step away, then turns abruptly back. And Hotch is so determinedly thinking about the case that for the crucial moment he assumes Reid is too, so he winds the window down.

Reid says, "I could come back to your place, if you still want to, uh..."

His pulse quickens as if their conversation had never left off. He needs to end this, he thinks. He needs to end this with no possibility of ever just picking it up again. So he quirks his eyebrows and asks, "If I still want to put you butt-naked over my knee and spank you red as a beet, then throw you over the back of the sofa and pound into your burning hot ass until you beg me to stop?"

Reid's jaw hits the ground. His adam's apple bobs, and he ceases breathing entirely. Hotch overtly relishes every sign of arousal and nervousness and need, knowing that his appreciation only heightens them all. Finally Reid croaks, "Y-ye—"

At which Hotch lets his smile turn cold and hard. "Go. To. Hell."

And then he drives back to his apartment and feels like a complete and utter shitstain.

*

Hotch is, in fact, one hell of a profiler. Age nine he could already mostly tell when a slantwise apology would appease his father's anger and when it would only further fuel it. By age twenty-seven he'd taught himself enough of the broader applications of the craft to catch Rossi's attention and get into the BAU. And on his thirty-fourth birthday he knew perfectly well that Haley didn't want him going to Mexico after another serial killer. He just hadn't been willing to let that stop him.

But there are reasons why it's called behavioural _science_. One is that they form hypotheses based on the available evidence, and so Matloff's defense attorney was partly right: sometimes they get it wrong, which is why they keep gathering evidence and fine-tuning their hypotheses. Another reason is that it requires a certain objectivity that's hard to maintain when what you're trying to profile is the inside of your own screwed-up head.

 _That was petty,_ he rehearses each morning on his way to work. _I should have just said no._

And on the way back to his apartment each evening he berates himself for not having said it.

It's not that he can't admit when he's wrong. It's true he doesn't like to: apologies still make him feel intensely vulnerable. But when one is needed he can screw his courage to the sticking place.

And it's not that he secretly thinks he was in the right. So Reid's the one who started the mindgames: so what? He _told_ Hotch he wanted to control when this started and when it stopped, and Hotch went after him again in full knowledge of that. What Hotch did in return was an attack, uncalled for. A cruelty verging on the sadism he's determined to reject. An apology is the _least_ of what Reid deserves from him.

So why can't he—? It doesn't matter why. He needs to do it, so he's damn well going to do it.

"Reid," he says while the team are gathering their papers after the next morning briefing, "a minute." Reid blinks in startlement and the rest of the team share the teasing looks of schoolkids whose friend's being kept after class, but none of them really thinks anything of it. When they've filed out of the room Hotch says, "I want to make it clear that I'm not changing my mind." His stomach clenches and he pushes on, "But the way I went about saying that was inexcusable. I want to apologise for that, and for letting this drag on far longer than it should have."

"Hotch," Reid starts, objection in his tone.

"That's all," he says firmly, and stands up with his files.

"But—"

"That's all."

It eases the guilt considerably. And leaves him feeling unaccountably empty.

He's not completely naive. He could understand it if he just had some stupid, unprofessional, impossible— "Crush" doesn't seem like the right word when it's more about rage than lust and it's only about Reid to the extent that Reid's the one offering. But the _evidence_ doesn't stack up. Both times Reid walked away from him he felt nothing but relief. Why should it be different just because Hotch is the one doing the walking?

Screw the whys of it. He's walked. The best thing for him right now is to stop dwelling. Focus on his work, spend what time he can with Jack. He can't do much about the dreams, but he can quit wallowing in the masturbatory fantasies.

Take up a goddamned hobby.


	4. Chapter 4

The next case is grim — they always are — but it's good to see Kate Joyner again. Perhaps timely. They always worked together well: he enjoys her no-nonsense approach, her dry humour, her looks.... He doesn't know that he's really ready for anything serious, but he thinks after the case is over he might be willing to see what happens.

And then he comes to in a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a silent street in flames, and Kate's missing.

Hurt.

Dying, bleeding out beneath his hands, and no-one will help. Everyone's sitting safe behind their cordons where he _told_ them to, for fear of the terrorists, and she's going to die for it.

They stop the terrorists. Kate dies.

Morgan drives him back to DC. The last of the adrenaline keeping him going dissipates on the way. Back in his apartment it's all he can do to take a couple more painkillers and crawl fully-clothed into bed.

He doesn't sleep well enough even for nightmares.

A knock at the door rescues him from a semi-consciousness less restful than waking and more tortuous. His first thought is alarm: is he supposed to have Jack? His head swims when he sits up. "Just a minute!" he calls, and the pain in his ear instantly makes him regret it.

As he limps out, he steadies himself with a hand on the wall. It can't be Jack. Haley always phones first, to make sure he's not on a case. JJ would definitely phone first. Dave mightn't. If it's Dave, Hotch will tell him to piss off. Unless he's brought food, in which case he'll take it and _then_ tell him to piss off. But Dave's knock wouldn't be nearly so tentative—

He stops halfway through turning the door handle. Maybe it's Garcia, he tries. Or a pair of Mormons. Maybe there's been a screwup at the bank and his landlord's come to dun him for the rent.

On the other side of the door, Reid ventures, "I just want to say something and then I'll go?"

He lets his weight on the handle finish opening it and turns back to the sofa. It seems a long way down with muscles this stiff, so he turns again there too.

Reid's staring at him in dismay. "I didn't... Are you okay?"

"It... twinges a bit." He's trying for an ill-advised humour, but it comes out sounding like he's had an IED explode next to him and kill someone he really, really liked. He decides it doesn't matter. "What did you want to say? —Just... don't shout," he adds in deference to his ear.

"No, that's the thing," says Reid in sudden earnest. "It should have been me apologising for assuming it worked the same for you as it did for me when really I didn't have any evidence to support that at all."

"Reid, I think you had plenty of evidence."

He shakes his head, in full flow now. "But it's not about the violence or the sex. I mean, that's— was— the violence was important, and the sex would probably—"

"I know you put me off because you needed to control when it started and stopped."

"Yes, and that was enough, even just stopping the conversation, to satisfy me, and I thought— I guess I didn't think, because you told me not to play games and I didn't listen." With an unhappy grimace he adds, "I didn't listen when you told me to shut up right at the start, so really if you want to talk about what's inexcusable, then I guess I'm the one who didn't understand how consent works. So, uh, that's what I wanted to say," he finishes. "I'll go now."

Hotch stares at the closed door for a long time after he does. About half of that has penetrated his murky brain, enough that he suspects an uncomfortable epiphany is pending. But right now he's too exhausted to stand for much longer, and before he collapses again he really needs to use the bathroom.

*

In a day or two he's healed enough to chafe at the inactivity, but Jack's at an age of excited squeals and happy shouting that makes an agony of his ear, and by the afternoon Hotch needs a nap even more than his son does. TV is just stimulating enough to bore him, so he spends a lot of time staring at his apartment walls contemplating the inside of his head.

So of course on Tuesday evening he ends up at Reid's apartment.

Reid answers the door and gets a panicked look in his eyes. "It's Hotch," he says over his shoulder, barely soon enough to stop Hotch incriminating them both.

"Ooh, Hotch," says Prentiss, coming into view with a delighted grin, "busted!"

There's no way her mind's gone there that quickly. "I'm sorry?" he temporises, but struggles to think: what else would he be doing at Reid's place, of all people in the team?

"Admit it, you thought you could hustle Reid into catching you up on our cases."

"No," he says, as shiftily as he can deny something that is in fact false. "No, I just thought we could have a... restful conversation about the psychology of sexual sadists."

She looks sceptical. But Reid bounces on his toes with an excited, "Ooh, have you read the article by Brandt and Payne?"

Prentiss mistakes Hotch's pained look. "You walked right into that one," she teases, and grabs her coat to make her own escape while she still can.

When Hotch is inside, Prentiss out, and the door safely closed between them, he cuts off Reid's annotated bibliography with, "Brandt and Payne? You know she's going to get suspicious and look that up now."

"It's a real paper," Reid objects.

Hotch blinks. "Really?"

"Nominative determinism is a powerful force," he says, and Hotch can hardly argue with the man who can _Reid_ dozens of pages a minute. "You know, actually I've got a copy of it here." Prentiss was right: Hotch did walk into that one. But he'd better read the paper now, so he lets Reid rummage through his books and journals looking for the right issue.

"I thought about what you said," Hotch says meanwhile. "And I think your first assumption was essentially accurate. When I got too aggressive it was a relief to know you would, and could, enforce those boundaries."

Reid says, "I still shouldn't have kept pushing after you said to stop."

Hotch can hardly disagree, but agreeing feels a little hypocritical when it affected him so much he barely tried to say anything of the sort. "Can we just... agree that we both did and said things we shouldn't have?"

Reid thinks about it and nods. Then, instead of one article, he brings Hotch an armful of journals and books that might easily make up a semester's worth of recommended reading. But what the hell: it's not like he's doing anything else at the moment.


	5. Chapter 5

Then he finishes healing and all that's left is the loss and grief and sheer unfairness of it all.

All he's ever wanted to do is stop the monsters before they hurt anyone. But it's just not possible. Monsters can't even be _identified_ until they've done something monstrous, and then it's too late. At best he can prevent a second victim — a fourth, a seventh. And you put one monster away, more come to take their place. And every death is a failure, whether it's a homeless prostitute no-one seems to remember or his own dear friend.

Every time someone burns out, like Gideon, it's a failure. Every time someone gives in to the monstrous, like Elle—

Thinking of Elle terrifies him, because he can so easily see himself in her, or what he might become if he ever gives in to this feeling that it's not fair, that after all his work he deserves to keep his family at least.

A family is not a reward for doing the right thing. Haley and Jack are not toys to be pulled out when he's finished his chores. They deserve to be happy too.

But doesn't he deserve _something_? Some _one_ on whom to release all this pent-up rage?

No. No.

 _No_.

*

Also at this point they reach the one-year anniversary of Haley leaving him, and the divorce is finalised.

*

He convinces the doctor, despite his torn eardrum, to sign him off for light fieldwork.

Flying turns out to be a mistake. So does getting too close to a digger in action. And standing next to a gun being fired.

He concedes defeat and drives home instead of flying back with the team. But more piercing even than the physical pain is knowing that, though the original killer was caught and executed a year ago, even beyond the grave he's still managed to have someone complete his mission for him. What's the point of anything, with cases like this? Haley was right: there's always another serial killer. Hotch threw away his marriage for the quixotic fantasy of a man with a hero complex and now he's got nothing to show for it — nothing at all.

He shakes his head and makes himself focus on the road. It reminds him of his last two long drives, and for once that seems a safer train of thought. Even with Reid reciting, _the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering_. Even with Reid reciting, _Hit me. Hurt me. I want you to hit me._

The articles Reid gave him on sexual sadism are a varied lot, but one thing they all agree on is that consent, or the lack thereof, is key. One thing not one of them mention is how the equation changes in a professional context. —It's conceivable that they're all assuming this has been sufficiently covered in _Professional Ethics 101: Don't sleep with your subordinates_.

Take Reid out of the equation, then. Find someone else. But who else would want it? _and_ trust Hotch not to cross the line? _and_ be able to recognise and stop it if he tried to manipulate where that line was drawn?

Take the professional context out of the equation, then. If Reid took a transfer — but that's the problem, not the solution. Now if _Hotch_ took the transfer — but if he couldn't for his wife and son, he's certainly not going to for a casual fling. Shameful as it is, the BAU is everything to him: the team he's built, the work they do. Haley knew before Hotch did that she came second. She could even live with it. What she couldn't live with was when Jack came second too.

If he lost the BAU, on top of his family, he could punch and kick forever and feel no better for it. And what would stop him, with nothing left to lose? Everything that's wrong about this is exactly what best protects them.

Which doesn't make it right.

The question is, are there any real benefits that outweigh the risks?

Which is either a very good or a very bad question, because he then spends the next six hours of the drive fantasising about the benefits in explicit detail.

*

When he gets back to his apartment he empties and repacks his go-bag, drafts his report for the case, and writes a transfer request.

Then he checks the time again. It might have been a seven-hour drive for him, plus the stop for lunch, but the rest of the team would have gone from the jet back to the office and might easily still be there. He texts Reid: _When's a good time for me to return those journals?_

He imagines the wait for a reply is longer than needed to type 'now' or '8' or even 'Thursday'. He tells himself Reid might be on the road home, and in any case isn't obliged to jump at his call. Then Reid texts back, _I'll pick them up in 22 minutes._

His pulse quickens at once. It's exactly how long he'd expect it to take to get here from Quantico at this time of the evening. Reid knows he doesn't want to just return the journals. And he's asserting control.

Twenty-two minutes later, Reid knocks nervously at the door. Hotch lets him in. His eyes aren't darting around the apartment this time: they're focused on Hotch in breathless anticipation, as if he might hit him at any moment and Reid wants and fears it in equal measure.

"Your journals are on the table," Hotch says testingly.

Reid doesn't look at them. "Okay."

"Do you still want—"

"Hit me, Hotch."

A soft buzzing starts in his ears that isn't tinnitus. He makes himself say, "There's still one thing we need to cover." The envelope is on the table too, and picking it up sobers him a little. "What we're doing has its risks, especially given our working relationship. I don't think I'd ever cross that line, but I need you to keep this in case I'm wrong."

Reid looks at it like it's a scorpion. "What is it?"

"My transfer request. Just in case," he repeats, but Reid still shakes his head. "Reid, you know what we're doing is dangerous. Every time we talk about this you get nervous."

"Because pain is inherently painful!"

Drily Hotch says, "I don't think this is going to work if we aren't honest with each other."

Reid scowls at him, but Hotch waits him out again. "Hotch," he says in frustration, "I'm nervous I won't be able to cope with it. I'm nervous I'll give the game away at work. I'm nervous the neighbours will hear and call the police. I'm nervous I'll get nervous and trip over my own feet and fall and break my collarbone. Being nervous about you getting too caught up to hear me telling you to stop is way down the list — I don't need that letter."

"But Reid, it's right at the top of my list, so _I_ need to know that if it happens — even if it's just once; even if it doesn't seem like a big deal; even if you like it — you'll get that letter to Strauss."

"It'd destroy you," Reid says unhappily.

He scoffs. "It's a transfer request, not a confession." But it's not what Reid meant, and this time Hotch is the one who looks away. "Anyway, I'd rather go quickly than drag it out and risk taking anyone else down with me."

Reid chews his lip for a moment more. Then, without meeting Hotch's eyes, he takes the envelope, shoves it deep in one of the journals, and hefts up the stack of them. "I'll come back."


	6. Chapter 6

He's at once restless with and calmed by the enforced wait. The enforced indefinite wait: Reid's giving him another _demonstration_.

He takes inventory of his kitchen and plans a month's worth of casseroles and leftovers. He checks his email and adds the team's contributions to his draft of the case report. He paces briefly, and he stands looking out the window even though it's the wrong side of the building from where Reid will park.

The door opens and he turns with a start. Reid. Lips parted as he meets Hotch's gaze and not only pushes the door shut behind him but fumbles the chain on.

Hotch feels the air coming in through his nostrils, filling his chest.

"So," Reid says across the room, "is there... anything else we need to cover?"

He is pretty much running out of delaying tactics. "Safeword?" he suggests.

"No," Reid says. Hotch is about to object when he continues, "or stop, or don't, or—"

"Variations thereon," Hotch agrees.

They look at each other for a long moment. Reid takes one step forward, and stops. It's Hotch's cue, and he's rooted to the spot. They've spent so many months talking around this — _he's_ spent so many years fiercely suppressing all those urges—

Reid tries another step, and from his still-parted lips comes, "Hit me."

It's enough to unroot him. He moves towards Reid, slowly. Deliberately. He sees Reid swallow, and he focuses on that — wrests his mind to think, _So he should._ In a warning tone he asks, "You're sure?"

Reid gives him a jerky nod. "Hit me," he repeats.

His fingers curl. He eyes Reid's shirt, selecting a spot. Thinks dimly, _Not too hard_. Telegraphs all his moves, but still Reid stands there, breathing unsteadily. So he throws the punch.

He feels all Reid's ribs in it; imagines Reid feels all his knuckles. With a yelp Reid stumbles, but catches himself before there's any danger to his collarbone. Hotch is teetering too, mentally. He already knows where he'll strike next, and only presence enough of mind to wait for Reid to catch his breath and choose not to stop him.

More ribs. This time Reid tries to swallow his cry, and doesn't quite succeed. The neighbours won't be calling the authorities, though: the walls are well insulated.

"Hotch," he complains, and reflexively Hotch pulls back, "you hit like a nine-year-old girl too."

"Well, I don't want this to be over too quickly," he hears himself say, and sees Reid's eyes widen, and the teetering in his head threatens— He doesn't pick where this time, or wait, just measures the force. Reid steels himself better, which is not what Hotch wants, so he brings his right fist into play too.

It gets him a startled yelp and a flinch that softens it, but his left again straight away takes Reid completely unawares: this "Ow!" is half pain, half affront.

Hotch hears himself chuckle but makes himself say, "Want me to stop?"

He's prepared either way — thrown when instead Reid gasps, "Wrong question."

 _Makes_ himself stand still though his pulse is singing for more. "What do you mean?"

"Any response it elicits would be ambiguous: if I say no it might mean I don't want you to stop or it might mean I'm too d-distressed to listen and I actually mean 'no more'. So what you should—"

"Want me to keep going?" Hotch cuts in before he can completely run out of breath.

Reid nods and uses that last of his breath to stutter, "Y-yes."

He does. Three quick jabs to get him off-balance again. Then he can slow back down, strike and wait for Reid to _almost_ be ready, strike and wait _just_ long enough to keep him from panicking. A steady pace, the sort he could keep up for a long time, savouring every huff, every whimper. Strike—

Reid stumbles again. Hotch catches his shoulder, and the jerk of it catches at his pulse. He pulls him around, shoves him face-first against the wall, and—

"Wait wait wait!"

He holds him there, feeling him breathing raggedly under his grip, feeling his own heart hammer in his chest. He tries to count back: loses track. He didn't lose control quite, or awareness, but it was... a very different kind of lucidity. It turns his head inside out to think about it too closely and a knot rises in his chest.

"It's enough," Reid says.

Hotch steps back, letting out a breath, and the knot dissolves. The world shifts back into sharp-edged, bright-hued focus, and every muscle in his body feels _alive_. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm— I'm okay, yeah." He pushes himself off the wall and brushes his hair off his face. His hand shakes, a little. His face shines like he just won the lottery. "You?"

He shakes his head in bemusement. He's not the one who just got beaten up. "Fine."

"Okay, so, uh... a week or three?"

"Does that actually suit you?"

"I think so, yeah." He goes to the door: "I'll see you back at work."

It would be a more effective exit line if he didn't try to open the door with the chain still on. Hotch reaches over his shoulder to undo it, and uses the opportunity to say, "I won't be taking any extra days off, so try not to look too startled when you see me tomorrow."

"Hotch," Reid says with a smirk as he slips out the door, "I don't think anyone will be too startled to see you tomorrow."

*

Smart-alec that he is, he's right. Even Dave, who was the one prodding for Hotch to take that time, only gives him a resigned look, and they get on with their day. Except a few hours later Dave starts to walk past his office, then changes direction and comes inside. "Don't think I didn't see that smile," he teases.

"Good god," Hotch says in deadpan consternation, "someone in the BAU is _smiling_?" He's been trying to be discreet in keeping an eye on Reid, but he also wants to know if the endorphins give way to regret. So far they clearly haven't. For either of them.

Dave chuckles and settles himself comfortably into a chair. "It's infectious, isn't it?" he says with a tip of his head out the window at the bullpen. And it's true: Hotch and Reid aren't the only ones in good spirits today. He confides, "I've got a theory."

And again, there's no way he could have come to the correct conclusion that easily. All the same, he might, given enough data. Hotch says amiably, "Dave, has anyone ever told you you're a gossiping old hen?"

Impervious, Dave leans forward and ticks off the facts. "Last night he's head-deep in depressing case files just like the rest of us. Gets a text message and ten seconds later he's out the door. This morning he walks in like the cat who got the cream. A cat who can't get his messenger bag off without wincing at sore muscles." He spreads his hands. "You do the math."

Obediently Hotch suggests, "Maybe he got a new book in the mail and fell asleep on his couch reading about brain biochemistry."

Dave looks at him in exasperation: all the more so because he has to admit it's a lot more in character than his own theory. He grumbles, "Aaron, has anyone ever told you you're a spoilsport?"

"I think they usually just complain about it behind my back," he says, and goes back to his paperwork.


	7. Chapter 7

By the time the endorphins wear off they're busy with teaching and consultations and a child abuse allegation in a cult, which goes completely balls up when some power-hungry state attorney general decides to raid the place out of turn.

There was never any hope of getting all the hostages out alive, but they get most. And, what shouldn't be more important but is: Prentiss and Reid. When they get back to Quantico, Reid lingers on the jet. "Are you driving Prentiss home?" he asks.

"Assuming she doesn't take off without me," Hotch says. Which, for all the pain she's in from the cult leader's beating, is a distinct possibility, so though he waits for Reid's point he doesn't hide the fact that he'd like him to be quick about it.

"Can I come over after?"

His brain switches gears. His body remembers how furious he was at the attorney general, and all the tension of the long negotiations with the cult leader. The agony of listening to Prentiss being beaten as he once watched Reid being tortured — but he's not the only one who's made that connection, is he? That's what this is all about. "Reid, that's not a good idea. When a case hits home like this one has for you—"

"That's exactly why I want this," Reid argues, and steps right up in Hotch's face. "Don't you?"

 _Not. On. The. Jet._ Dimly he remembers Prentiss is waiting; wrests his mind back to that, and says, "One hour. We'll talk."

One hour is enough to drive Prentiss home, and to heat a can of soup for dinner, and to phone Jack before bedtime. It's nowhere near enough to subdue the thrum in his blood that murmurs insistently, _Want this. Hit him. Hurt him._

Reid, when he arrives sixty minutes later on the dot, is if anything twice as truculent as he was on the jet. "There's nothing to talk about," he says as if the conversation had never gone on hold. "I know Emily's going to be okay. I know she didn't just take the fall to protect me, it was because I already had a rapport with Cyrus and we stood our best chance if he continued to see me as sympathetic. So I'm not trying to prove myself, Hotch, I'm trying to distract myself."

Hotch rejects the attempt to turn this into an argument. He observes, "You're trying to exorcise your demons."

"Maybe... keep them at bay."

"Is that why you come here instead of doing this at your place, and why last time you left as soon as we were done? To keep me at a safe distance?"

"You're not a demon," Reid says. Hotch would quibble, but Reid's already two sentences on: "And my place would personalise this. It's my home, it would remind you who I am and you wouldn't be able to let yourself hurt me. But here—" He falters. Hotch narrows his eyes. "It's not... not really your home."

A coldness suffuses Hotch from the inside out, and a hotness. He knows what Reid's hesitating to say. It's too late to unknow it; too soon to react. "Go on," he says warningly.

Reid swallows, maybe even considers changing the subject, but he wants a distraction. He wants Hotch angry. He presses on desperately: "It only reminds you that you don't have a home anymore. Or a family. That H— your wife left you and you can't get her b—"

Hotch yanks him around by the shoulder and up against the wall. He's starting where he left off last time, half hoping that Reid will cry off now like he did then, half hoping he won't. "Stop. Talking."

Reid nods quickly.

Hotch shoves again and the air huffs out of him. "You want this?"

He nods again, quick jerks of his head up and down the wall. Belatedly he gasps a breath back in.

Hotch punches his back, just under his bony shoulder blades. Like a nine-year-old girl, testing the give of Reid's chest against the unforgiving wall. Reid doesn't complain this time, if you don't count the grunt, and Hotch doesn't stop. He just punches, and punches, and Reid's grunts turn to a choked whimper.

Suddenly Reid ducks away from him. The wrong way: Hotch only has to slam him up against the half-wall to their right instead. His cry is louder this time, and the whiskey glasses on the other side rattle.

The sounds go to Hotch's head faster than any liquor. He reminds him, "You want this to stop, you need to say so."

"I just wanted to get off the connecting wa— all!" he yelps as Hotch's fist connects again with his ribs.

And Hotch is gone. He hits Reid's back while his shoulders hunch to brace against the wall. His head alternately ducks beneath his sheltering arms and buries itself in his sleeves to muffle the cries that warm Hotch's belly.

But he wants to hear them. He wants to see the grimaces of pain. He wants to quit marking time with these feeble punches and really put his back into it. So by collar and belt he hauls Reid off the wall again.

"Hotch!" he cries, legs flailing beneath him.

Hotch aims him at the clearest part of the room and shoves — almost throws.

His feet go out from under him but he takes the fall well. Rolls straight into the same huddled curve, arms protectively over his head.

Hotch already looms over him. Uses his foot — not to kick, quite, but to lever him forcefully onto his back. When he scrabbles on the carpet to try and pull himself away, Hotch steps hard on his thigh. He cries out again and scissors in pain, and grabs Hotch's ankle.

The next instant Hotch has shaken him off and fallen three paces back. He has a vivid image of a desperate Reid resorting to the gun in Hotch's own ankle holster—

But it was the wrong ankle, and the gun is in its locker, and Reid collapses back on the floor with a smug grin on his face. "You were wrong, I didn't need to say anything to get you to stop."

Hotch tries to clamp down on his irritation at being so gleefully manipulated, only to find there's no irritation to clamp down on. He's breathing hard, his blood is pumping, and he can't stop smiling back down at Reid. "Are you just going to keep on giving me _demonstrations_?" he asks.

"Probably yes," Reid says happily. He elbows himself onto his side and begins sitting up. When Hotch steps forward again to offer a hand, he takes it without hesitation and lets Hotch help pull him to his feet. Then he starts to the door — and turns back partway. "Did you want me to stay for a bit?" he asks curiously.

"Not especially," Hotch says. "I just don't want you to think you have to go."

"I don't," Reid assures him.

Testingly he adds, "So I'm assuming if I offered to drive you home you'd just disappear twice as fast?"

Reid smiles and nods and seconds later is out the door.

*

Hotch makes Jack's birthday. He even survives the intense awkwardness that is small-talk with Haley's family post-divorce. (Jessica and their mother are coming round. Their father, on the other hand, is civil in a way that makes it very clear that he's _only_ being civil because Haley asked him to and he, unlike Hotch, will do anything for his little girl.) When Jack opens his present, his shriek of excitement doesn't cause even a twinge in Hotch's ear.

So all in all he's not doing too badly.

Which doesn't fill the aching hollow of being a guest in his own home, no longer welcome in his own bed. (Not his now. Never again his.) Of having to take his cue from glances and a lull in the conversation to give his son a smiling hug and walk out the door, back to his car, back to the soulless furnished box at the goddamned Langham.

Even now he has the most vivid dreams of Haley: all wry smiles and rueful looks, and in his arms, and he in her, so soft and there and gone gone damnit! —And, Newtonian in its equal-but-opposite intensity, he dreams of throwing Reid up against his car in the dark of the Quantico parking lot and punching, punching, punching.

They all talk about it at work: violence as a substitute for sex.

Except. The first times he and Reid talked about this, when Hotch was repressing the hell out of his urges to violence, he'd indulged plenty in his left hand. Talking about it, thinking about it, had aroused him. Now — a hitch in his breath, a kick to his pulse, the way the world narrows to a single point: his body is preparing for action, yes, but not for sex.

Sex as a substitute for violence is probably not his weirdest profile ever, but it's up there.

When Reid comes by next, Hotch says, "There's something I wanted to talk about, and it's probably going to be a lot easier when I'm already high on endorphins, but if you want to just go afterwards..."

"That's okay," Reid says, then seems to calculate something. "But I'll need juice. Any sugar really, but hydration is important to the body's healing processes and vitamin C helps prevent bruising."

Hotch catches the train of logic he's skipped over there, and can't decide if he's more dismayed or exasperated. "Reid, you're not supposed to go into _shock_."

"It's not shock," he defends himself, "it's a perfectly natural reaction to intense physical activity."

"You're not running a marathon, Reid, you're getting beaten up, and if you're not going to think about yourself then at least think about everyone else on the road. It's irresponsible—"

Reid flares back, "Actually I do think about myself, which is why I know what I need and when I need it, and why I told you about it in the first place, but if you're that worried about it then I'll just go home right now."

With which he wheels to the door. And when Hotch orders him back with a peremptory, "Reid," he only shrugs an angry shoulder and pulls the door shut behind him.

So, fine, _now_ Hotch wants to jerk off.


	8. Chapter 8

It takes most of two days to spot the opportunity, but finally he times a trip to the coffee pot in perfect conjunction with Reid's. Reid has been stolidly ignoring him, disguising it from the rest of the team by ignoring everyone else too. But no matter how deep he buries his head in case files, he still needs coffee.

Hotch passes him the other thing he needs: "Sugar?"

He takes it on auto-pilot. For a moment Hotch thinks his feigned abstraction might have become real enough that he hasn't even heard the implied apology. Or maybe it's too little too late. But a moment after he starts pouring he says conversationally, "You know putting high fructose corn syrup in everything has given sugar a bad rap. Historically sugar in more natural forms was highly prized for its high energy content."

"Well, sure," Hotch says, as carefully offhanded. "I mean, I always keep some juice in the fridge for Jack."

"These days I keep a couple of cartons in my car. —Did you know forty-eight percent of US adults lack emergency supplies?"

Hotch suspects that piece of trivia comes from a nervous recollection that the kitchenette abuts the bullpen and anyone might overhear anything at any moment and wonder why they're talking about juice. But he runs with it, with a sidewise glance testing his luck: "I suppose they figure, what are the odds of anything happening anytime soon?"

"Actually you might be surprised," Reid says, disposing of his stirrer: "when you consider all around the world and factor in tornados and other adverse weather events, uh, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic and limnic eruptions, and of course that's only natural disasters, so all told the odds of _something_ happening tonight really approach a hundred percent."

"Whoa," Morgan says from behind them while Hotch is still attempting to work up a coherent response to that double-entendre of a promise, "he's back. Hotch, what'd you say to him?"

"I passed him the sugar," Hotch says, as if he's not sure why this obvious recourse never occurred to anyone else on the team, and takes his coffee upstairs while Reid scuttles in embarrassment back to his desk.

*

Reid doesn't completely let it go, because it was never about the juice. He's reminding Hotch who controls this, from the moment he walks in the door with an abrupt (no less nervous), "Hit me properly this time."

And just like that Hotch is ready to. Still careful: he rushes him, so that Reid steps reflexively back and is off-balance at the moment he strikes. But, as much as the initial impact, it's his follow-through that bears Reid to the floor, and spins him to land safely with an "Oof!"

He's on him, then, pounding his back. But, "Properly!" Reid insists between yelps.

"Are you s—"

"Stop _asking_ me that. I'm sure, that's why I sssss—" But it's another restrained one: Hotch is too nervous of bones and tendons, muscles and skin. In frustration Reid twists himself out from under him. His upwards scramble is aimed at the door.

Not again. Hotch yanks him back down and he sprawls. Hotch punches his thigh and his cry rings in Hotch's ears. He pulls him up again just for a better angle, hits so hard he nearly loses his own balance. Readies another—

"Wait," Reid cuts in. While Hotch waits he rearranges his legs under himself and gulps a breath as if he's about to dive into the deep end. Then, "Okay, go," he says, and it's Hotch who's plunging down, down, down—

"Wait," he says a second time. Hotch tears himself from the haze. Watching Reid shift position feels like treading water, fully clothed. "Go," and he's sucked down—

And "Wait," and he's surfacing again, gulping for air. Reid stretches his shoulder with a considering grimace. Grasping his last tether to himself Hotch says, "I get it, Reid. You don't need to keep—"

"I'm ready now."

This time he stays under. When Reid tells him to wait he waits, and when Reid tells him to go he lashes out, and it's all the same current bearing him along, humming in his ears, filling his chest and mind. When Reid tells him to stop and pour them both some juice he goes to the kitchen and a minute later brings two glasses of it back out.

Reid has dragged himself up onto the sofa and watches him curiously even while accepting his juice.

"What?" Hotch asks.

"Just waiting for you to come out of it."

Hotch blinks at him. Blinking feels odd. So does standing there looking down at Reid on his sofa. And then a swell and a surge and his head is suddenly clear, except that he feels like a pile of rags that just washed up on the beach.

In a disturbingly good way.

"This is all kinds of screwed up," he says.

"I don't really see it like that," Reid says earnestly. "It's more that everything else is screwed up, this is just a... an adaptive strategy."

"Well, I wish it wasn't the best strategy either of us could come up with."

Reid grants that. He sips some juice. Then he asks, "Is that what you wanted to talk about?"

He's curled up at one end of the sofa, sneakered feet tucked under him with no regard for the leather, so Hotch sits on the other half. The glass is cold in his hands: he runs it absently across his reddened knuckles. Even high on endorphins it helps that he's rehearsed this. "I was remembering we talked about sex at the start, and it hasn't come up again since."

"So to speak," Reid says.

Hotch side-eyes the smirk he's hiding behind another sip from his glass. "At all. For either of us, I'd say."

He considers a moment and agrees, "I guess not."

"Is that a problem?"

"No. Not that it'd be a problem if you wanted to, I mean: really I don't care _how_ you hurt me."

Which is an intoxicating pronouncement all by itself. Hotch files it safely away while he checks, "And that's all it would have been."

"Hotch, look at the language you used: 'pound into your burning hot ass'." He stammers a little on the words, and ploughs hurriedly on. "It was always about the impact, the transfer of kinetic energy." In an attempt to get past the awkwardness he jokes, "I mean, it's not like I've got some kind of crush on you."

"Well, no," Hotch agrees straight-faced: "everyone knows your crush is on Rossi."

Reid chokes on his juice. The noises he makes spluttering are a thing of beauty, and Hotch savours them long after he's the only one left in the apartment.


	9. Chapter 9

The birth of JJ's baby is for Hotch the culmination of a maelstrom of mixed feelings. Happiness for her and Will, of course, and that's the one he makes sure everyone sees at the hospital.

But he also remembers that three years ago he was the one with a glowing wife and a brand new son. So he's intensely jealous, and more creepingly afraid. For some people, like Haley, parenthood changes everything; while for others, like Hotch, it... doesn't. JJ might decide she doesn't want to come back from maternity leave after all. Or she might, and—

His own mistakes have no place in this, he tells himself. And nor does the other thing: this nagging, completely unjustifiable, feeling of having another rock in his life walk out on him. JJ does _not_ deserve to be the locus of his insecurities.

So he smiles in the hospital room with the team, and when Reid arrives straight off the jet from Las Vegas and JJ wants to talk with him alone, Hotch manoeuvres everyone else out of the room and buys Will a congratulatory coffee downstairs.

When Reid rejoins them all he's got a bemused look on his face. "She asked me to be Henry's godfather."

Dave claps him on the back, and Garcia squees, and Morgan and Prentiss tease him. But Hotch remembers and sees the echo in Reid's face of the old terror: _Why would someone let me be responsible for such a tiny, previous life? Don't you realise I can't — I'm too damaged — I'm going to destroy it?_ So he tells Reid, "You're going to do fine."

Reid gives him a grateful smile, while Will too reassures him how much it means to JJ. Then Will heads back upstairs, and the team starts drifting out towards the carpark, talking about bars. Reid says, "I need to catch up on some sleep, so, uh — I'll see you tomorrow."

"It's Saturday tomorrow, genius," Garcia teases.

"Unless you know something we don't," Prentiss adds, with a look to Hotch.

Hotch says, "He'd better not. I'm supposed to take Jack to the park in the afternoon."

Reid ducks his head and repeats, "I really need to get some sleep."

Reid never forgot what day of the week it is. Hotch's blood sings at the thought, and he feels sick. He might never have raised a hand against Jack (yet: he doesn't remember Dad hitting him either until he was seven) but is taking out his anger on Reid really any better? Reid's consent may absolve him of guilt (though Hotch's conscience is still catching up on this) but abuse harms the abuser too. What is he turning himself into under the cloak of 'consent'?

And yes, he knows that it's an important cloak, but his head remains a godawful mess.

He lets himself get drunk at the bar. Not enough to amuse the rest of the team, but enough to take the edge off. It's been a long time since he's been even this tipsy. Even before Haley was pregnant and breastfeeding he never liked mixing drunkenness with domesticity. As a student he didn't hang out with that sort of crowd. So it might be as far back as his angry teen years, rebelling by skimming alcohol out of his father's liquor cabinet. No matter how much he took, never enough to make a dent in what Dad put away each night.

He'd forgotten how much easier it is to get to sleep with a little relaxation flowing through his veins.

*

On Saturday morning he catches up on laundry and paperwork. In the afternoon he tires Jack out on swings and slides, and in the evening there's a knock on the door.

"What's the box?" Reid asks curiously when Hotch lets him in.

Hotch glances back at it on the table. "Haley put together some of Jack's old things for Henry."

"That's nice. I thought she and JJ didn't get on."

("I was a bitch to her," is how Haley put it this afternoon. They'd always somehow rubbed each other up the wrong way, but she meant the weeks when Hotch had been dragging his heels on the separation paperwork, as if that might have saved the marriage instead of just forcing her to contact him through JJ. Hotch looked down and admitted, "I didn't make it easy for you." From the corner of his eye he saw the rueful agreement on her face, and then they changed the subject. There are getting to be things they can talk about without awkwardness, but the divorce itself isn't one of them.)

He changes the subject now, too. "You know it's only been a week."

"Nine days," Reid corrects. "And you said every week or three." His tone is reasoned. He isn't annoyed yet, but he looks like he's about to be.

"I'm not worried you can't handle it," Hotch says, "I'm just... concerned about the escalating timeline."

He doesn't say _for both of us_ or _but mostly me_ , but he thinks Reid hears it anyway. At least he turns thoughtful and says, "We don't really have enough datapoints to say for certain but I'm pretty sure that it's more an anomaly triggered by, um, external factors than indicative of a trend."

"And you don't think I've been hitting you more?"

"Well, yes, but that's only to be expected with any kind of exercise. I mean, if we were sparring—"

"We're not sparring," Hotch says sharply.

Reid falls silent.

If they were sparring, Hotch wouldn't follow him to the floor to keep hitting him. If they were sparring, Reid would hit back. If they were sparring, they wouldn't be reduced to clandestine meetings arranged by intuition and innuendo.

After a moment, Reid says, "You still only hit me as much as I want you to."

It's a small thing. It's the key thing. It's enough (with Reid's intoxicating echo, "I want you to") to let him allay his qualms, or stifle them.

Mostly. Because it's still only been nine days, and bruises take time to heal. So when he's got Reid up against the wall, instead of throwing another punch to his back, Hotch takes an open palm to his buttocks.

Reid _yips_ at the first one, but only from surprise: he takes the next few with barely a hitch to his breathing. He has the sense not to complain that Hotch is being too gentle, though. And as Hotch keeps up a steady pace, punctuating it with an occasional series of harder swats, he starts making noises again. Gasps at first, and squeaks, and a keening whine that sends an intoxicating shiver down Hotch's spine.

 _That,_ he thinks, though it's less thinking and more instant fixation: he wants more of _that_ one.

He spanks him harder and gets a series of yelps; thinks better and eases off only for Reid to take the opportunity to gulp in a fortifying breath. Harder and slower; softer and faster. He tries five in a row all in exactly the same spot, and a series all in different places, and a series where each partially overlaps the previous.

"Ow!" Reid complains in a dozen pitches, each a little louder. Once it turns into the start of a howl, which is good, but not what he's looking for. And he knows the futility of trying to recreate—

"Ow, ow—"

How many killers have they dealt with who've been trying to do just that? But though his arm's tiring, his palm burning; though Reid is trying to twist away from him and he has to pull him back; still he needs—

Reid buries something near a shriek in his sleeve.

Hotch rakes a hand up through his hair and yanks.

"Ow, Hotch—"

"You _know_ I want to hear it," he growls, and holds him there, elbow between his shoulder blades, as he keeps laying into him.

Reid unleashes a high-pitched string of profanity. A distant part of Hotch would laugh, but he needs this, just once before he— Desperately, despairingly, knowing he won't get it, which means he'll never be able to—

"Stop!"

And as if that were the sound he was waiting for (and, after all, wasn't it?) everything else drains out of him and he's left only with a bone-deep satisfaction.

He falls back and watches Reid sag against the wall. Pressing his aching hand against his thigh, he thinks of him driving home and winces — barely keeps himself from offering to drive him. Besides, he tells himself, it's not like he wants anything in his hand right now except a bag of frozen peas.

Reid swears again, this time a shorter mutter: clearly he's had the same thought. But he pushes himself back off the wall and says, "See you Monday."


	10. Chapter 10

They do settle back into a less worrying timeline. And Hotch copes with JJ's absence. He copes less well with her replacement Jordan: his most shining moment there is having asked Prentiss to keep an eye on her.

He still resents Jordan's lie to the victim's family. No: the effortlessness of the lie. Prentiss was right, two years ago, to call him out for his distrust of women, but trust is hard when, intellectually, he knows women are so often better liars than men. And even that is only an excuse. It's hard emotionally, because he remembers his mother lying with that same ease to cover for his father. To protect him, and her marriage, when she should have been protecting her son.

(It's the one thing in the divorce he always felt grateful for, even in the worst days: at least it proved that Haley would rather protect Jack than their marriage.)

His mother's active negligence is far beyond what Jordan did, so Hotch makes himself move on.

But a couple of months later it's similar enough to Kathy Gray — abducted as a girl and now as loyal a wife as any murderer could hope for — that he has no trouble slipping into character as the bad cop: angry and impatient with her lies, threatening and bullying her, shoving her chair to make her look at the photos and enjoying the cry it scares from her.

Trusting in Prentiss to stop him going too far, not so much in her role as good cop as in the fact that she's never yet shied from telling him how it is.

They get the name they need. When he comes out of the interrogation room he finds Reid on the other side of the one-way glass, frowning over something. Hotch doesn't have time to ask what it is: "Let's pick this guy up," he says.

*

It ends badly. Oh, they catch their UnSub, but then they find out: there are more. More murderous fathers with more brainwashed wives training more ten-year-old boys to become more murderous fathers. An endless cycle, as family violence so often is, and behold Hotch too all-but-assaulting a victim (an accomplice to murder now, yes, but still a victim). _Should_ he have trusted Prentiss after all?

Of course he should. It's _his_ head and instincts he can't trust.

Getting home late he goes straight for the whiskey, empties and repacks his go bag, makes short work of another thick finger, and sleeps until his alarm clock heralds another day of it.

And when at work Reid brings a report up to his office he says, "Reid..."

Usually Reid would just agree. Or Reid would be the one glancing a question at him, and Hotch would nod, and that would be that. But this time a troubled expression flits across his face. "I don't know, I need to think," he says, and flees back down to his desk.

By all the perverse laws of what they're doing, the not-quite-rejection should reassure him. Instead, remembering Reid's frown outside the interrogation room, the pit of self-doubt in his stomach only opens the deeper. 

He puts a lid on it. He can't indulge in that right now. There _cannot_ be _any_ consequences at work for what they do or don't do in private, no matter how indirect or intangible. So he focuses instead on his reports and the latest stack of consults and barely lets himself notice the hours passing.

Reid standing up at the end of the day catches his eye. He's shrugging his satchel on over his head and he looks up at Hotch's office. Not an answer; not even a question; it's a command. Apparently Hotch is going to get another demonstration tonight.

*

But when Reid lets himself into Hotch's apartment, he just walks straight to the table with set jaw and determined gaze and sits down in one of its chairs.

Hotch was working there while he waited, his files transplanted from the office. He started to stand when the door opened; paused at Reid's approach; and now he looks down at him, thinking very, very fast.

Sitting in a chair at a table, directly across from the man who's about to assault him. It brings to mind the interrogation room from yesterday. It also brings to mind Reid's torture at the hands of Tobias Hankel.

Not everything, Hotch reminds himself, feeling like a jackass, is about Hotch.

Reid gives him a wild, terrified, determined look. "Do it!" he insists.

He doesn't want to. But this isn't about him. He dredges up a coldness, a hardness, and slowly circles the table. He doesn't want to emulate Hankel, and he said when this started that he wouldn't shove Reid backwards. But _forwards_ — if he can do it to a traumatised woman in an interrogation room, he can do it to a man who's not just consenting to it but actively demanding it.

He puts his hands on the back of the chair—

And Reid bolts.

"Reid," he says, and instantly changes tactics: "Please?"

Reid converts his dash for the door to a fretful pacing. "I'm sorry," he says. "I just— This was a bad idea."

The bad idea, Hotch knows instinctively, would be letting him go now, panicked and miserable and still roiling with whatever brought him to ask for that in the first place. There has to be a way to let him work through it without being so viscerally reminded of nearly — not so nearly — dying. "What about the sofa?"

Reid looks at it, and gulps a breath, and folds his arms tightly in on themselves while he calculates. Hotch waits as non-intimidatingly as he can manage. Part of him hopes that Reid will make a counter-offer, but then Reid jerks a nod and sidles over to it.

Hotch lets him settle onto it before he starts moving. As he approaches he sees the TV screen in front of them both and thinks: this _was_ a bad idea. He doesn't want to remember watching the screen where Reid was shoved backwards in his chair; where he went into cardiac arrest; where he died. Reid doesn't want to remember watching the screens, being forced to choose, forced to see another murder.

But in that mirrored black surface, Reid only gulps another breath and shuts his eyes and nods tightly. "Do it," he says in a voice high with desperation.

Hotch puts his hands on the back of the sofa.

Reid quivers, but stays put.

He shoves it.

Reid has to catch his balance, but that's all. "B-backwards," he says.

Hotch's grip is so hard he feels the frame through the leather and cushioning. He tastes bitter steel at the back of his mouth. He said he wouldn't shove Reid backwards, but something gentler.... He pulls instead, slow and smooth but inexorably tipping Reid backwards.

"Down-Hotch-put-me-don't!" tumbles from his lips: Hotch isn't sure of the order of the words, but it doesn't matter. He's already lowering him, twice as gently. The last inch puts a strain in his arms but he manages it without a jolt. Reid is clutching the leather and breathing in jerks. "I'm okay, I'm okay," he gasps as Hotch moves around the sofa. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to freak out, but I'm— I'm okay."

"Reid," Hotch says, sitting beside him, "it's fine. Honestly I'm not that comfortable with it myself." Reid doesn't look at all reassured, but insisting will make no difference to that. He says instead, "We never really did finish talking about what you want from this, and I didn't push it because you're in control here anyway. But if you want to keep going tonight, we could start with that."

"I don't want to talk," Reid says peevishly.

Hotch waits a moment, to see if he'll recognise that he needs to, but he only crosses his arms again defensively. Pressing the point, with his need to control these visits, would be counterproductive.

Which leaves profiling him. Hotch has already determined that just stopping will only make it worse. He suspects that falling back to their usual... non-representational violence would be the same. Reid's wanting to confront what Hankel did to him head-on: he'll see anything less as a failure.

Which leaves one obvious option.

Hotch really hates the thought of it. It's not just playing with fire: they always do that. This is throwing C4 in the mix, and if it goes wrong—

But it already is going wrong. Reid would say it went wrong a long time ago.

"I'm going to do something," he says. Reid looks at him nervously, but doesn't say anything to stop him. So, reaching for Reid's legs, Hotch swings them up onto his lap.

"Hotch—"

"Reid," he interrupts, holding his calves there on his own thighs, securely as you'd hold a skittish animal or a distressed child. (And then torture— He makes himself focus.) "Do you trust me?"

He waits patiently for the answer. Reid already suspects where this is going. Having it confirmed will send his heartrate through the roof. Hotch needs to keep him _just_ calm enough not to panic and stop this and blame himself ten times as much.

Reid swallows and says, "Y-yes."

"Okay, then," Hotch says. He scoots as far left as the sofa allows. "Lie back."

Reid wriggles reluctantly and awkwardly into position. There's room to use the arm of the sofa as a headrest, but for now he wedges a shoulder back against the corner so he can watch, wide-eyed.

When he's ready, Hotch shifts his grip. He holds the legs with one hand while with the other — no sudden movements — he pulls off one shoe.

He's prepared for the reflexive attempt at kicking out, and holds on tight. Waits for Reid to subside, then tosses the shoe on the floor, and sends the other one after it. Reid gulps, but lies there stiff as a plank while Hotch peels off the first (purple) sock. When Hotch starts on the grey one, though, all his tension boils up into a desperate, "Hotch, I really—"

"Reid," Hotch interrupts again. He holds his hands perfectly still on Reid's shins and grey sock as he meets his anxious gaze. In reassuringly steady tones he tells him, "You're in control of what I do here. So all you need to do is control yourself."

"I know, but I just— You have to be really careful with the small bones of—"

"Reid. Enough talking."

He flinches again, but he does close his mouth.

Without losing eye contact, Hotch finishes peeling the sock off and drops it with its mismatched pair on the floor. He lays his hand over the top of Reid's near foot, fingers along the long bones to the toes, a small confrontation without being an immediate threat. "I am familiar with the basic concepts of bastinado," he reminds him.

And, following Reid's torture, more of the advanced ones than a sane person would want to be. And here he is, about to inflict it — and _can't_ show any reluctance.

So calmly he slides his fingers to the toes, over and under. "I know the bones of the toes are vulnerable." He stops again when he's holding the ball of the foot. Reid is breathing hard, but his mouth is pressed in a tight line. "But that's not what you're really afraid of."

With his other hand he takes firm hold of ankle and heel. "I also know that the vault of the foot is exceptionally sensitive to pain." When he slides his fingers there, Reid reflexively tries to jerk away, but Hotch's hand around his ankle holds his foot very nearly motionless.

 _Very nearly_ isn't good enough.

He lifts his fingers barely off the skin, then presses down again. He contains the jerk this time. He lifts off again, and comes back from the distance of an inch. Reid's trying to restrain himself now too, though Hotch can't rely on that. The reflex is still there.

"I'm not going to injure you," he says, giving the sole another gentle tap as he gets used to the exact position his hand needs to be in. "And I'm not going to use any implements." A firmer pat. "It is going to hurt" — Reid's mouth opens — "but you're in control."

Another firm but painless pat, and if Reid was going to say anything he lets it out now with his unsteady breath. He squeezes his eyes closed instead and lets his head fall at last back against the armrest. It changes the angles, so Hotch repeats the pat twice more before ramping it up another fraction. And another. And another.

Each from a little further; each a little more forceful; each a little louder. Every single one at the same steady pace. Predictable, making the panic controllable. Somewhere along the way they become slaps and start to sting, and somewhere along the way Reid's ragged breathing turns to squeaks and yelps.

The sounds pull at him. And he slaps down every part of himself that responds. He _cannot_ screw this up.

He's reached a plateau in the force he uses, but with bastinado there's no plateau for the pain. With his hand gripping Reid's ankle he feels not just every flinch, but all the tremors between: the determination to bear it, and the strain of it that builds and builds—

And bursts into a flailing of limbs for escape.

Hotch still has the near leg firm in his grasp. He grabs the other before Reid can pull a muscle in his panic, and holds them both together on his lap. There's no 'stop' and no 'no', even as Reid wrestles himself into a calmer state. So Hotch shifts his grip to the far ankle instead; puts his other hand on top of the foot; slides his thumb down into the arch to just as slowly begin again.

He's even more careful now to make sure the swing he develops for this foot goes nowhere near the other, its shin trapped more loosely under his forearm. Each gentle pat etches the new angle more deeply into muscle memory. As they turn into less gentle taps he watches both legs closely — not losing peripheral awareness of Reid's arms or the emotions playing on his face — and makes himself _feel_ too for the earliest heralds of movement.

Then light slaps, and Reid's breath hitches again. But he seems more settled this time, as if he knows how far he can go.

Firmer, and harder. More yelps that Hotch is managing not to _enjoy_. (Which shouldn't be so _hard_.) When Reid's near foot suddenly moves he nearly misses a beat. But it's pressing down into Hotch's lap. It's on an awkward angle to avoid new pressure on the arch, but safely out of the way all the same.

Hotch slaps again watchfully: a flinch and yelp and the near foot presses down only the more. _Safe_ , Hotch decides provisionally, and keeps up the rhythm without letting up his vigilance. It's just far, far harder than it should be not to be distracted by the fact that he has someone at his mercy, whimpering and writhing—

 _Safe_ , he determines again: the shin's slipped from under his forearm's control, but only to press the foot nearer to his body, further from any danger. But still he needs to _focus_.

He slaps. Reid mewls, and in his convulsions his foot brushes Hotch's groin, but it's _safe_. He slaps. Tears of pain leak from Reid's screwed up eyes but his tension now has a different quality, like intense concentration—

Slaps, and feels the foot move again, hard and warm, against his cock. _Safe_ , he thinks, then realises it was also _deliberate_. Startled, he asks, "What—"

Reid takes advantage of his distraction to tear out of his grasp. He scrambles up, stuffing his abused feet into his sneakers. No hesitation, no distress: Hotch is still cataloguing his body language and he looks as relaxed and pleased as he always does when he's given Hotch a _demonstration_. He planned all of that.

"Was that because I said 'Enough talking'?" Hotch asks. He hadn't meant Reid couldn't safeword.

"Sorry," Reid says without looking back. "I just... took it as a challenge. I'm sorry."

"I'm not—" _Not complaining_ bears all the wrong connotations, and anyway Reid's already on his way out the door.

Leaving his socks behind.

And Hotch sitting on the couch as exhausted as he's ever been from burning the midnight oil over paperwork. His palm aches, and his shoulder and neck are stiff from holding Reid's legs still. He feels a headache coming on.

And not an endorphin in sight: only the feeling of the world about thirty degrees off-kilter. What the everlasting _fuck_ is he doing that makes torture seem like a reasonable Thursday night pastime?

This wasn't about Hotch, he reminds himself, and throws the socks straight in the washing machine. He goes to wash his hands while he's at it, and his face, and then he comes back and makes a dinner that he only eats half of. Uneasiness fills his stomach instead, and all he can think of to satisfy it is to text Reid. He wants to ask if he's okay, but he knows better than that by now. After several minutes staring at the blank screen he manages instead a more tactful, _Did it help?_

 _Yes, thanks,_ Reid texts back.

But it doesn't help Hotch.

He puts the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow and pours himself a healthy measure of whiskey instead. He sips it over the paperwork he's brought home, and this is, face it, nowhere near the most screwed up thing about his life right now.


	11. Chapter 11

The uneasy feeling persists for days despite all the evidence that Reid's doing just fine, until Hotch finally admits to himself that it's just him.

So either he's still hung up on the torture thing — which would be perfectly sensible, but if he was _perfectly sensible_ he'd never have got into this to start with, and when it comes down to it the bastinado session probably turned out the safest and least injurious of everything he's done....

Or else he's just put out that Reid got what he came for and Hotch, focused as he had been on Reid's physical and emotional safety, didn't. Which isn't the most selfish he's ever been about something, but it's up there, so more than likely that's the size of it.

Either way it's a load of bull, and not something he wants to lump Reid with. So he screws it up and shoves it behind him and makes himself move on.

JJ's return helps immeasurably with his attempt to get back to normal. Even two weeks later he finds himself taking his coffee mug for an early refill just for an excuse to walk through the bullpen where she's laughing with Prentiss, Reid and Morgan.

He's slipping past with a fleeting smile of acknowledgement so no-one thinks he wants them to stop when Reid abruptly says, "Hey, Hotch, what are _you_ doing this weekend?"

JJ snorts. "Spence, you sound like you're asking him out on a date."

Prentiss chokes as if this is the most audacious thing anyone's ever said about Hotch, and Reid splutters. "What? Why would you—"

Hotch interrupts the deflection, "Well, I'll be lucky to get out of the office before nine, so it wouldn't be much of a date."

Prentiss looks dismayed. "Hotch, you've got to get out more."

"I get out," he defends himself. "If I get all my homework done on time, Jack's promised to take me to the playground tomorrow."

"Ooh, Pretty Boy, he's two-timing you," Morgan teases.

Reid's scowl augurs revenge. Hotch makes a nominal attempt to distract him from it by asking, "What about you?"

"Um, there's a seminar I want to catch on the way home about the predictive validity of graphological inferences and then mostly laundry. I keep losing my socks."

"Oh, do not talk to me about laundry," JJ says with a heartfelt groan. "You wouldn't believe the amount of detergent we're getting through in a week, and some of the stains, I swear it's like I'm using plain water."

"Actually some products have been shown to be _less_ effective than water," Reid says. "There's a lot of misleading information out there, which is ridiculous because it's a simple matter of biochemistry. —You know, if we ran a series of experiments — I could design some protocols—"

As he grabs a pad of paper and pencil, Morgan warns, "Stop him now."

JJ backhands his arm. "Sh, he's helping me do my laundry."

"Oh, I don't know who's going to regret this more," says Prentiss.

"Baby stains?" Morgan says: "My money's on the kid."

She gets a speculative look in her eye. "How much money?"

Hotch clears his throat to remind them they really shouldn't be placing bets in front of their supervisor. He adds, "Reid—" Reid guiltily turns the page on his protocol design, so he converts it to a more mild, "Check the sofa," as he lifts his mug again to finish his trip to the coffee machine.

Reid blinks, but recovers quickly: "I will."

*

Later in the day JJ brings him a pile of cases to review and in exchange takes the smaller pile he's done with. She's halfway to the door when she abruptly turns back and asks, "Was I missing something before, about Reid's socks?"

He manages a faintly puzzled expression. "Um, they never match?"

"I know _that_ ," she says with a half laugh, then shakes it off. He feels a twinge of guilt for making her doubt her own instincts. "I guess I still feel like I'm playing catchup."

"Really?" he asks in genuine surprise. "From here it feels like you never left."

"Well, Jordan left everything in good shape."

Which isn't what he meant at all, but she's not much better at taking a compliment than he is at giving one. He tries, "You know, she was afraid I took you too much for granted."

She smiles. "I don't think you ever took anyone for granted."

Except, he reflects when she's escaped back to work, isn't that exactly what he did? Take it for granted that no matter how often he left Haley for a case, she'd always be there when he came back?

And more often than not she was doing _laundry_ when he did. He remembers the endless laundry of a baby vividly, yet can't dredge up a single useful bit of advice for JJ. It's because his contribution to it was limited to folding a few towels and feeling really good about himself if he ironed his own shirts. And then he'd convince Haley to let the rest of it wait while he tried to make up for his absences with an affection so desperate it became artificial.

Taking for granted that the laundry would get done when he was away again at work.

So he was a crap husband; what else is new? he asks himself, and buries himself back in his work so as not to risk himself coming up with an answer.

*

He's barely in his door that night when Reid arrives. His eyes go to the sofa as if the socks might have been waiting there all along.

Hotch fetches them out of the dryer where he's kept them rolled into a neat particoloured ball. "JJ was suspicious," he says.

Reid frowns in worry. "About us?"

"Not specifically, but she knew something was up. I convinced her she was imagining it."

"So it's okay."

An irritation he didn't know he felt flares at that. "I don't enjoy gaslighting my agents, Reid. Why did you even bring it up out there?"

"I didn't have an excuse to come to your office and I didn't think it mattered."

"You don't need an excuse to come to my office. It was a needless risk, and I think that's why you did it."

"Why would—"

"Because you're afraid they'll find out, you want to conquer that fear, so you deliberately court it to prove to yourself that you're beyond it."

Reid's mouth purses stubbornly and he steps up in Hotch's space. "But the thing is, Hotch, you took part at least as much as I did, so I don't think I'm the one you're really angry at. So are we going to stand here profiling each other or are you going to hit me?"

He grits his teeth. "Reid, we said this wouldn't affect the team."

"Fine, it won't happen again. Hit me."

Part of him wants to refuse to indulge him. Part of him knows he's being unreasonable and needs to get this out of his system. Part of him is fast losing control at Reid's repeated, "Hit me," and part of him still resists that. But when Reid shifts even closer Hotch shoves him away, and follows through with a punch, and there's the decision made.

He's just got Reid against the wall when his phone starts ringing. He punches his chest again, and there's the decision to ignore it.

Reid gasps and swallows and quickly says, "Your phone's ringing."

"I hear it," he says, and hits the same spot again, hard enough that Reid would double over if Hotch weren't holding him up.

"Hotch, stop, it might be important."

Reluctantly he pulls back as the phone rings again, and when Reid doesn't fall down he goes to the table to answer it. Of course it's important: nobody phones on a Friday night if it isn't. It's an apologetic JJ with a case in Idaho.

He looks at his watch though he knows full well it's close on nine thirty. An hour to track down the pilot and prep the jet, nearly four in the air: Idaho is two hours behind DC, but even so there's no point arriving after midnight. "Okay," he tells her, "wheels up at six in the morning. Send me those files and notify the rest of the team." He hangs up, checks he really has hung up, and asks without looking at Reid, "Where's your phone?"

"In the car."

"You should have time to get down there: she'll start with Morgan and Prentiss." They're the ones most likely to be out on the town and to need to curtail their revelries.

"I can say I left it behind when I went to do my laundry if you want to finish—"

"Reid," he cuts in, "I need to make a phone call and I need you uninjured tomorrow: we've finished. Don't forget your socks this time."

He doesn't even know why he said that last, but this isn't the time to be psychoanalysing himself. He starts dialling and Reid takes his socks and leaves.

Four rings later, Haley picks up with a resigned, "Hello, Aaron."

He hears in her tone that he doesn't need to tell her. He wouldn't be phoning her on a Friday night if it wasn't a case. "I'm sorry," he says. "I know you had plans."

"This isn't about my plans, it's about your time with your son."

He shuts his eyes. "I know. I promise I'll make it up to him."

"Don't— Aaron, people aren't balance sheets. You can't swap out one hour for another."

"I know," he repeats helplessly. "It's just Dave's away on a book tour or I'd say they could go without me."

She gives a short, bitter laugh. "No, you wouldn't."

There's nothing he can say to that. He wants to protest, but she has far too much precedent on her side.

"Aaron," she says more gently, "he'll miss you, but he'll accept this is just the way your job is and you'll go to the playground next time. Just don't make him any promises you can't keep."

"I won't."

"I mean it. I _will not_ let you keep getting his hopes up like—"

 _Like_ echoes in the abrupt silence as she swallows the rest of the sentence. Like he did with her. Hopes raised and dashed, over and over— "I won't," he repeats over the hollow in his stomach.

They arrange for him to phone Jack in the morning from the jet. He hangs up and his eye falls on the whiskey sitting patiently on the side-table. Gold in the glass, warm in his belly, and—

He shakes his head sharply. He has peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to make for dinner and casefiles to read.

*

Two hours later he lies in bed, knowing he has to get up again in another five, and utterly unable to quiet the buzz in his head. Three mutilated corpses: he knows how to box that up for long enough to sleep. But it just leaves him with gaslighting JJ, and taking it out on Reid with words instead of fists; and standing up his three-year-old son, after years of doing the same to Haley; and the nagging reminder that the whiskey would help him sleep, but he _can't_. He has a case in the morning.

One glass. He needs to sleep. He's hardly overindulging: it's been three days and with this case looking like it does will probably be at least three more—

But that has nothing to do with the fact that for all intents and purposes he's on a case _right now_.

No. Right now he's trying to sleep and failing miserably. He throws the covers off: it's not like there's any risk of the jet taking off sooner than planned. One glass, and in the morning a tall glass of water and he'll be fine.


	12. Chapter 12

There are other trips to the playground with Jack. And there are other visits from Reid. But too there are more cases: always more cases.

Cases where he has his parenting abilities validated by a woman killing men who remind her of her absentee father, which has got to be the definition of damning with faint praise, and where he sits with her as she dies at the end because somehow he feels worse for her than for her victims.

(What the hell kind of person is too cheap for child support? It's _your child_ : if you're not going to look after them yourself then the least, the absolute least you can do is pay the person who does.

(But then what kind of person decides that her daddy issues justify murder, and what kind of person sits and empathises with her out of his own guilt? What kind of person accepts her SIM card, 'accidentally' runs off an extra copy of its contents, and instead of shredding it mails it anonymously to the media to fulfill her — a serial killer's — mission?)

Cases where he's caught between standing up for his team and kowtowing to international politics, and very nearly chooses politics.

Cases from ten years ago, starting with a washed up police captain dying of liver failure, passing through a massacre on a bus that Hotch still feels he should have somehow prevented, and ending with the Boston Reaper (no: George Foyet) triumphant and in the wind. Hotch waits for the Marshals to change their minds and call the BAU in. When they don't, he goes in person to try and change it for them. And when that fails, he goes back to his apartment and makes a serious dent in his whiskey supplies, because what the hell else is there to do?

*

Just about anything else, he tells his bleary-eyed reflection next morning when he wakes with an almighty hangover. Paperwork. An hour at the gun range. A run around the park. Phoning Jack. Phoning Reid. Just. About. Anything.

He drinks as much juice as his nausea can stomach, gives himself the shower and shave he neglected last night, and takes a taxi in to work. "Car trouble" explains his lateness, and his lateness explains why he heads straight to his desk without any more explanation. There are plenty of reports to catch up with that don't involve life-and-death decisions. What he'd do if a case came in he doesn't know, but fortunately that waits until tomorrow.

*

Once upon a time Hotch figured that after enough cases he'd stop having trouble with the bad memories they dredged up. He never figured on bad memories being _additive_.

Now it's not just the cases with abused children that get to him. Now any arson case reminds him of every arson case: watching a contaminated site go up in flames with Evan Abby inside it, which reminds him of realising Abby had cancer, which reminds him of discovering Dad's condition, which reminds him of Dad's death and Dad's alcoholism and Dad's belt and Dad spending hours with him at the National Numismatic Collection gazing at the double eagles.

And the smell in the hall where they've laid out the victims reminds him of sitting by a woman dying of her burns, which reminds him of sitting last month with the serial killer who gave him absolution because he _tries_ to visit Jack every week. Sure, Jack idolises him. Hotch idolised his own Dad to the point of blaming himself for provoking the beatings. He saw how respected Dad was at work and wanted to be just like him—

And here he is: a workaholic, respected at work, a bully to his subordinates if not his son, and when he snaps at Garcia she _blames herself_ —

He tries to fix it, and she smiles again. But he knows: words are weak. The pattern is set.

He goes back to his apartment, the ache deep in his soul. It's late and there's no question of sleeping without help: he heads straight to the whiskey. Just like Dad. And even on that thought he takes another sip because, despite everything, the alcohol does help, so how can he not?

Like an arsonist or a serial killer: once they start they can't stop.

A knock at his door stops him, glass halfway to his lips.

A lot of thoughts flash through his head, sorting themselves into a tactical analysis and an action plan. He knocks back the rest of the whiskey, returns the glass to its place, and walks to open the door. Even as Reid's stepping in, Hotch is turning away again: "I'll brush my teeth. You don't want a faceful of my dinner."

It is, as he says it, a terrible lie. He clearly hasn't been cooking, though Reid doesn't sound suspicious yet as he asks, "You ate on the way home?"

"Yeah," he says, and bites back the urge to elaborate that it was a sandwich. He doesn't even have onion on his sandwiches, and Reid knows it. He goes with that instead, a more natural self-deprecation: "I forgot to ask them to hold the onion."

"Sorry, I know it's late," Reid says, "I— I just couldn't sleep." Because everything isn't about Hotch. Reid has bad memories too, and an UnSub who was bullied as a boy is bound to have pushed all his buttons.

"I'll just be a minute," Hotch says, and shuts the bathroom door.

Reid probably knows how long he takes to brush his teeth too, so he tries not to linger under the accusing glare of his reflection. He's lying. Which Reid will know if he goes anywhere near the whiskey glasses. And he didn't even need to: there's nothing wrong with having a drink after a case like this one. All he needed to say was, _Sorry, Reid, I've been drinking. Come back tomorrow._

He still could. And should. Maybe not the truth, because the instinctive lie makes it look worse than it is, but he hasn't entirely painted himself into a corner. _Reid, the fact is I'm just not up to it tonight._ Easy.

The problem is that that'd be a lie too, and one that Reid would call him on. He's more than up for it: he wants it badly. He's tight with rage, and it might be largely at himself, and it might be partly for what he's about to do, but ultimately isn't it always?

Drinking and beating up a kid: Dad would be proud.

When he emerges, Reid's hunched on the sofa, looking shrunken and miserable, rubbing his eyes. Hotch studies him a moment, because if he's spotted the used whiskey glass then Hotch has some fast talking to do, but he only says, "You were probably going to bed."

"I probably wouldn't have slept," Hotch says drily. He doesn't let himself step forward, though Reid stands up and his chest is tight with need. He wants this, but he also wants to be sure. "You really sleep better covered in bruises?" he asks. As he remembers it (and he tries not to) a beating makes for a restless night of trying and failing to find a halfway comfortable position to lie in.

"Um, not really, but the dreams aren't as— They're different, so that's better."

Hotch nods: a few hours without nightmares are easily worth ten with them. All the same. "Do you always sleep on your back?"

"Mostly I don't, actually, it's just on the jet it's eas—"

Hotch moves then, as Reid stutters to silence, and hauls him the rest of the way around the sofa. He doesn't much care about the details, he just wants to know where he can focus on. So he bends him roughly over the back of it: it forces the air from his lungs with a huff that all by itself makes Hotch's pulse jump and the vast empty room narrow to this one square yard.

He spanks him hard, and Reid yelps plenty, but — it's muffled. He needs more. "Your pants are in the way."

"Yeah," Reid agrees between quick breaths. He scrabbles for purchase, shifts enough to let Hotch undo the buckle of his belt. But when Hotch goes for the zip his pliancy turns to a flinch. "No, don't."

"You want to?"

"I— No, I'm sorry, I do want it harder, I just..."

So Hotch changes tack and pulls the belt out of its loops instead. Reid gulps audibly but doesn't say anything, either at that or at his first testing swat.

He has to stand a little further away to get a good swing going, but he keeps his off-hand on Reid's back. He feels the muscles tighten in apprehension and spasm at the blow; feels Reid shudderingly try to relax, only to flinch again at the sound of the belt in the air again.

And his cries, and how it's one and the same thing: that tension building until Hotch cracks it to sound; that sound breaking out until Reid catches it under a new tension. He's like the roil and clatter of a boiling kettle, and Hotch the fire that burns a boundless fuel. The roar of it in his ears, the heat of it scorching his own face, the smothering dark descending—

"Stop," Reid gasps, and Hotch jerks the belt back — "stop."

"I've stopped," he manages to say. He feels drained of everything. Sweat prickles his brow and it's a moment before he thinks to wipe it with the back of his hand. The loop of the leather swings before his eyes, making him blink.

Reid's scrabbling himself upright. His face is red from being held half upside-down, his hair even more mussed than usual. He takes his belt out of Hotch's hand with an abstracted, "Thanks." As he fumbles it through the loops he turns, and weaves a step.

Hotch grabs his arm. "Wait a minute."

"Let go!" Hotch falls back and he grimaces: "Sorry. But really I'm fine, I'll get my bearings on the way to the car."

Hotch nods. He knows the deal, and already Reid looks steadier on his feet.

"Thanks," he says again on his way out.

When the door's closed, Hotch takes the used whiskey glass to the kitchen sink. Not without a grimace, at the liquor and the lie both. But the self-disgust has fled with Reid, leaving only a resigned pragmatism: it happened, it shouldn't have, it won't happen again. And, by way of silver lining, the urge to keep drinking is gone too.

*

He sleeps sound, and wakes well-rested and calm. Calm, though the dreamless night has left him with the ghost of the belt all but solid in his hand, and in his mind the crystal-clear memory of his promise when this began: _No implements_.

Calm, as he remembers Reid's promise to give Hotch's transfer request to Strauss if he ever crossed the line.

Hotch sits on the edge of his bed with his phone in his hand, marshalling his thoughts. An apology, first. An abject apology. Then an explanation: the case, of course, hit hard. And Reid's unannounced arrival took him by surprise — not to blame him, it just meant Hotch wasn't thinking straight. Should he confess to the whiskey? But even if that wasn't all the more damning, a single glass of whiskey explains nothing. He'd _drive_ on one glass without qualms, even empty-stomached.

So keep it simple, and always apologetic, and ask: what does he need to do to (make this go away) (make it up to him) make it right?

The problem — the reason he's not actually dialling — is it's hopeless. He made Reid promise: _even if it's just once; even if it doesn't seem like a big deal; even if you like it_.

And Reid will hate it, but he won't break his word. The only thing arguing will do is make it harder for both of them.

So it's done. It's... done.


	13. Chapter 13

He walks very calmly through the rest of the weekend. Haley's rearranged everyone's plans to let him have Sunday with Jack instead of this latest failed Saturday. He treasures every second and thinks: at least when Reid gives Strauss Hotch's transfer request he'll have more time with Jack, and might Haley—?

No. No, she's making a life for herself now — she's even started sending out job applications — and he's hurt her too much already to ever have the right to hope. But more time with Jack...

On Monday he reprioritises his paperwork so he can make sure he's got the unit in order before he has to go. Leave balances, training for requalifications, teaching schedules. Notes towards performance reviews take most of the morning. The budget takes all afternoon, and still there's no sign of Strauss.

He looks out at Reid, and wonders— Wonders how often he's looked out at him today, and how he expects him to do this under constant surveillance. So he fills his briefcase with files to take home. Everyone looks up in surprise when he leaves early, and he avoids Reid's eyes.

Two drinks and no more. Okay, three; but he does stop there because tomorrow he'll have to face the team.

And yet when tomorrow comes: nothing. Not quite nothing, because Strauss is still sending out memos and commenting on reports, but _nothing_ about his transfer. All day nothing. Nothing but a faint nausea and growing unease as the day passes, nothing as everyone goes home for the night, and nothing—

He grabs a stack of completed reports and goes to find her himself and get this over with.

Her purse is by her mouse hand, as if she really is trying to get out of the office, any minute now. She looks up at him, and the files he brings, and asks, "Did I miss a leave request?"

"I'm sorry?" he says. The hair on the back of his neck prickles.

"All your emails today and now those files? You look like you're trying to clear your desk."

Her own desk isn't exactly clear, but there's no stack of unopened mail. She hasn't gotten his transfer request. Reid hasn't given it to her. His stomach twists with sick relief and a blossoming— He stuffs that down before there's any risk of Strauss seeing it. "No," he says with a calm he no longer feels, "I just wanted to get it out of the way while we were between cases."

And then, without even stopping by his office again, he goes downstairs and drives straight to Reid's apartment.

*

He pounds on the door, and when it opens he barges in. "Why the hell do I still have a job?"

Reid blinks and finishes closing the door one-handedly. His other still holds a half-read book. "Why wouldn't—"

"You were supposed to give Strauss that letter if I ever crossed the line."

"But you didn't."

"I hit you with your belt," he grits out. Reid only shrugs. "We agreed no implements."

"No, we didn't," Reid argues, "you said you didn't want them and I didn't care either way, so if it's a rule it's your rule, not mine."

"That's not the point—"

"Well, I think it is the point, because _my_ rule is that I'm the one in control and I didn't tell you to stop. So if no implements is a rule then I'm the one responsible for letting—"

"Don't turn this around," Hotch says darkly. "It doesn't matter who drew the line. _I_ crossed it," and speaking over Reid's stubborn negation, "and you need to give that letter to Strauss."

Reid shakes his head. "You stopped when I told you to stop, you didn't cross the line, so I'm not going to—"

"Where is it?" he demands. Reid ducks his head. His empty hand hides in his pocket as a fall of hair veils his eyes. The hard lump of betrayal sitting in Hotch's chest sharpens to something tasting of steel. "What did you do, _shred_ it?"

"No, but I'm not telling you where it is," he says with his eyes still on the floor.

It's here. Hotch wheels to scan the room and its books. It will be in one Reid doesn't consult often, so he doesn't have to be confronted by it. One no visitor would ever think of picking up. One he thinks Hotch won't—

In a tense, high voice Reid blurts, "I don't consent to you searching my apartment." As if there's something _else_ he doesn't want Hotch to find: something that wouldn't mean the end of _Hotch's_ career—

No. Reid's clean. He just wants to change the topic, to distract— This whole conversation is a distraction. "Fine," Hotch says, turning to leave. "I'll write a new one."

Reid stands in his way, wide-eyed, breathing fast. "I— I don't think you'll do that and you didn't cross the line."

"Move," he snaps, advancing.

Reid reflexively lifts his book, as if it were a shield. 

Hotch pulls it out of his hand and tosses it to one side. At Reid's dismayed yelp he presses his advantage: backs Reid against the door, until Hotch can almost feel the handle through his ribs and does feel Reid's fluttering breath on his face. Eyeball to eyeball he repeats, "Move."

Reid's breath hitches, but he doesn't move. Doesn't even say _no_ , or shake his head. "Hotch," he says with the same reckless compassion he uses to talk down mentally unstable UnSubs, "you did not cross the line. And I think you know that, or you wouldn't—"

"Be here?" he cuts in, laden with sarcasm. "But, Reid, didn't you say I'd be incapable of hurting you here?"

"You— you wouldn't cross—"

And if Hotch does, maybe _then_ Reid will have the sense to deliver that letter to Strauss. Or even better, call for help here and now.

With all his might, Hotch hauls him off the door and throws him after the book.

Reid makes a strangled sound in his throat as he goes flying — as he lands, a swallowed shriek. His roll is a clumsy clatter. Scrabbling to figure out which way is up, he repeats desperately, "You didn't cross the line."

Hotch kicks him.

"Nng!" is all that comes out through gritted teeth, so Hotch kicks him again, and again, determined to make the pain override his idiotic refusal to disturb the neighbours. Again, as Reid tries to roll away from him. Again, driving him the rest of the way to the sofa, whose leg Reid clutches as if he expects to find an ankle holster strapped there. 

He doesn't need to look that far. Hotch didn't disarm before he came here. Reid could take his backup off him and— All he needs is to see Hotch as a threat.

A harder kick crushes him against the sofa he's seeking refuge with, forcing a whimper from him. His other hand comes up to grab the arm of it. Hotch kicks his side, but he clings there. Between blows he drags himself up. But that only puts him in range of Hotch's fists, which can pummel from both sides with no risk of overbalancing. Soon Reid has to bury his face in the cushions to muffle his cries, and comes up for air with ragged gasps and damp smears on his cheeks.

Hotch is breathing heavily too by now. But he's close: Reid's back heaves with choked sobs. He buries his head again. Hotch re-angles the next punch to his side. Flips him, like a crab, onto his back.

Bent backwards over the arm of the sofa. Legs flailing for purchase. Shirt-tails loose, belly exposed. The panic barely contained behind gulping throat and wide dark eyes.

Hotch grabs him by the collar, lifts him, readies to—

The panic takes over at last: "Stop!" Reid squawks, struggling to get his feet under him. He wrenches out of Hotch's grasp and staggers a few steps — seems to stumble, then rises again with his book in his hand. He flicks rapidly through the pages, and heads with it to the kitchen. "Can you snib the door on your way out?" he asks over his shoulder.

Hotch stands there, drained and not nearly enough bewildered. He hears Reid opening the fridge and pouring a glass of juice.

So.

So that happened.

So...

He walks out of the apartment, snibbing the door behind him, and goes back down to his car. He doesn't drive: just sits staring at his hands on the wheel, replaying the whole thing in his head, from "You stopped when I told you to stop" to "Stop!"

And Hotch stopped instantly. He'd been _convinced_ he was attacking Reid for real, convinced that he was going to keep beating him until Reid called for help or killed him himself — convinced that's what he deserved. And all along Reid had just been giving him another goddamned demonstration that Reid's the one in control. That Reid can tell him to stop and he'll stop, every time. That he's not one of the monsters they chase.

He leans back against the head rest, closing his eyes and letting his hands fall. This idea, more than anything else, is beyond his comprehension. How can he feel this rage, commit this violence, and not be a monster?

Except that when Reid tells him to stop... he stops.

There's a familiar tentative rap on the passenger window. He lets out a long breath, without opening his eyes.

After a moment he hears the door open and Reid get in. "I, uh, brought you some juice."

"What?" But sure enough when he looks, there's a large glass of juice in Reid's hand. To rehydrate. Or for shock. When he takes it he feels his hand on the verge of a tremor. He holds the glass firmly in his lap instead of sipping it and risking Reid seeing that.

"Are you okay?" Reid asks.

"I'm—" _Fine_ is too bald-faced a lie. "Processing."

Reid nods and waits as if he just needs another minute or two to be all done.

Hotch could sip his juice in the silence, except he's pretty sure he'd just spill it on himself instead. Or chip a tooth on the glass. He's so focused on keeping a firm rein on the approaching shakes that he blurts out, "How the hell do you drive, after?"

Reid twists his mouth. "I think it helps when you're not having an existential crisis."

He snorts sourly. "Well, you don't need to worry, I won't be turning myself in."

Reid nods. He chews his lip, then in a tone brooking no arguments says, "I'd like to take a personal day tomorrow."

Hotch looks at him, meeting eyes that insist he's not _injured_ ; he'll just be sore enough tomorrow that the team would notice, maybe ask questions. That Hotch stopped when he told him to. Testingly he starts, "If we get a case—"

"Then I'll meet you at the jet," Reid says firmly.

Good enough, he allows, and says, "Okay." Reid nods again but keeps sitting there until Hotch asks pointedly, "Did you need your glass back right now?"

"Oh," he says. "Um, no, I'll get it next time."

Because of course there'll be a next time. And Hotch is starting to come around to that.


	14. Chapter 14

"Where's Reid?" Dave asks next morning.

"He's taking a personal day," Hotch says from a stack of casefiles: now that he knows he's staying, he's back to his regular work. "He said something about an idea for his latest thesis."

He's got this morning's text saved on his phone in case Dave detects something lacking of honesty. But Dave only says, "Huh," and a beat later muses, "I think there's a woman."

Hotch raises his eyebrows and turns a page. "I'm pretty sure there's just a stack of philosophy books."

"Not talking about the kid," Dave drawls.

Hotch gives him a Look, which doesn't dent his smugness in the slightest, and says, "There's no woman."

All he gets for that is Dave blinking and turning serious. "Aaron—"

"There's no man either," he cuts in before it gets embarrassing for them both. "I just had some things to deal with and I dealt with them."

"Well, it looks good on you," Dave says, undaunted. "As long as it's legal, I say keep it up."

*

There's legal, and then there's a good idea. It is, for example, perfectly legal to drink yourself to death.

Not that this is what Hotch is doing. So he has a little too much some nights and wakes the next morning feeling like the bottom of a bird cage. But he feels like crap plenty of other times too: too much work, too little sleep. And he never drinks on a case — barely even thinks about it. There's a line.

There are a lot of lines, compartmentalising his life. There's work, grim, stressful, intense. There's Jack, who's a shot of concentrated joy, and there's never enough time...

And there's his other failed family. Mom, who's presumably still alive since no-one's told him otherwise. And Sean, who could be dead in a ditch for all he answers his phone.

Hotch pours another drink and dials again. He doesn't even know why he bothers anymore, but—

It stops ringing. Hotch thinks he's reached voicemail again, but then Sean demands, "The hell's wrong?"

He nearly chokes on his drink in surprise. Swallows, as a dance beat throbs in the background, and says, "I just wanted to catch up."

"Oh, here we go," Sean says in disgust.

"What does that mean?"

"The interrogation. 'How's the restaurant, Sean? Are you seeing anyone, Sean? Have you cut your hair yet, Sean?'"

He smothers his irritation, and a joke Sean would take the wrong way, and for the sake of fraternal peace says only, "Actually I wondered if you wanted to come down for a visit some weekend."

"What, so you can interrogate me in person?"

"No," he says with a very forced patience, "so we can have a proper conversation. You could always ask about _my_ life, you know."

Which, pique aside, is a terrible idea. What's Sean going to say: _How are the serial killers, Aaron? Got any hobbies, Aaron? Still divorced, Aaron?_

After a long, awkward silence, Sean comes up with, "How's Jack? He must be... uh..."

"Going on four," Hotch supplies, too relieved to care that he has to. "He's great. Actually he's amazing. At the moment he's absolutely obsessed with soccer."

"Hah. He get that from Haley?"

He looks down into his glass, and summons up, "Well, I mightn't be able to explain the offside rule, but at least I can help him practise his kicking. —You should come to the park with us."

"That sounds like fun," Sean agrees. Hotch holds his breath and hears the _thud thud thud_ of the dance beat in the background like the pounding of an anxious heart. "I'll have to talk to my boss. Rearrange some shifts. I'll give you a call, okay?"

"It'll be good to see you again," Hotch says. They ring off, and he lets the phone slip from his fingers to the table as the forced smile slips from his face. Sean won't call him. He never does. However hard Hotch tries to jumpstart the relationship it does no good: it's dead in the water. Just another failure.

At least there wasn't any shouting this time. There's _something_ to drink to.

*

The third time Reid goes to visit their UnSub in psychiatric confinement Hotch decides he can't ignore it anymore. Some cases are hard to let go, but they have to, all the same. When Reid next drops something off in his office he asks, "You're still visiting Adam Jackson?"

"Amanda," Reid corrects. He's immediately on the defensive, justifying himself. "She won't let Adam out."

Reid has always taken the mental constructs of dissociative personality disorder a lot more literally than Hotch, who has little patience for philosophising. It's one of the things that make him so good at what he does, and sometimes such a loose cannon. Hotch tries, "Has it occurred to you that maybe Adam doesn't want to come out?"

"I don't believe that's what's happening," he says, a deliberately obstructive answer with no hooks to debate.

Hotch doesn't need hooks. "Regardless, neither of us is his doctor and our involvement in the case is over."

"I'm writing an article," Reid says before he can make it an order. 

Hotch looks at him: the set of his jaw and the stubborn lift of his chin. He'd be willing to bet that the only article is a few sentences even now being hastily assembled by the gears of Reid's brain in case Hotch challenges him. Research is part of the job, yes, but Reid's never written about DPD before. It touches too closely on his experiences with Tobias Hankel — which is why he's taken this case so personally. Maybe intellectualising it will help him. "Okay. Let me see an outline by Friday."

Reid shrugs mutinously. "Fine. Are you free tonight?"

"Don't bring that—"

"I'm not bringing anything into anything, I assumed you were done. Aren't you?"

"Watch your attitude," Hotch reminds him. "You can go. —And I'm free tonight."


	15. Chapter 15

When he gets back to his apartment he eschews the whiskey and sits down with a stack of paperwork. His right hand feels empty without a glass in it, which is— He shakes his head. It's only the waiting making him antsy. It'd be just like Reid to be late on purpose—

The knock at his door makes his nostrils flare and his vision narrow. Now.

But even as Reid steps in he's asking, "Where's my glass?"

"On the kitchen bench." He'd meant to keep it out of the way of potential breakage until they were finished, but Reid goes to fetch it without further ado. He waits restively while Reid sets it on the stand by the door, next to Hotch's keys. As soon as he steps away, Hotch can—

He steps away, asking, "Have you ever read _Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_?"

Hotch really doesn't want to continue this morning's argument. But if Reid needs to get it out of his system... He collars his need and feels it strain at the leash. "It's been a while, but yes."

"I always found it unsatisfying that Jekyll has to suffer the same fate as Hyde despite being innocent of his crimes. The author tries to make it seem inevitable by having the transformation draught fail, but really it was just because he wanted to punish Hyde and was too _lazy_ to find a more just solution."

"Well, it is hard to imagine how they could punish Hyde and not Jekyll," Hotch says. Or Amanda and not Adam. "When it comes down to it, they are the same person."

Indignantly Reid says, "Just because they share a body—"

"And a past. Didn't you once tell us that causal dependence argues that a connection to the past plays a large part in defining our identity?"

"But not everything. There's still motive — behaviour."

Hotch points out, "Jekyll's motives and behaviour are hardly impeccable. For most of the story he's more concerned with covering the crimes up than preventing future ones."

"He didn't know—" Reid objects. But that comes too close to admitting he's really talking about Adam, so he swerves as quickly: "He thought he _was_ preventing Hyde from appearing again; he didn't know he was too strong for him."

 _He was wrong,_ Hotch thinks with a fierceness that takes him by surprise. He doesn't say it, because Reid does empathise with Adam, and because Hotch really has no interest in a literary debate. "Maybe so," he says instead. He shifts forward: not threatening, just reminding Reid that there is a more satisfying alternative at hand.

Reid pays no attention. "You don't agree," he prods.

"No, I don't." If Reid insists on an answer, Hotch will give him one: "The whole reason Jekyll created Hyde was so he could get away with antisocial behaviour without the risk of society finding out. Everything follows from there."

"Antisocial doesn't mean criminal."

"It's hardly a leap. He's given himself permission to indulge in depravity; he's arranged everything so he can't be held accountable: it's all but inevitable that it escalates to assault and murder, and when it does he just carries on trying to avoid the consequences."

"He tries to suppress the transformations."

"But it doesn't work, does it? It's obvious pretty quickly that he's going to keep turning into Hyde, and his draught is _clearly_ not the answer—" He checks the note of contempt that creeps into his argument with that. Despite Reid's faint frown he wasn't thinking of opiates, but whiskey doesn't belong in this conversation either. _This conversation_ doesn't even belong here. His body is taut as a bow-string, ready for a real fight. He steps forward again and challenges, "Did you really come here tonight to talk about a nineteenth century novel?"

Reid backs away, but only to settle on the arm of Hotch's sofa. "Um, I— Actually it's a novella, but yes."

Hotch gives him a hard look. They are _not_ a two-person book club, and Reid knows it.

But when Reid looks away, it's not a sign of surrender. It never is, with Reid. He just regroups and looks back up at Hotch: "So what should he do instead?"

"Is this because we argued—"

"Don't bring that into this," Reid retorts.

"Then stand up so I can hit you properly."

He shakes his head. "No, I'm not letting you hit me tonight. If it doesn't work to give in to his urges and it doesn't work to suppress them, what— what else is there?"

The blood thrums in his veins, and he gives the answer Reid doesn't want: "Turn himself in for his crimes and be hanged."

" _Hyde's_ the one—"

"But this isn't someone suffering from dissociative personality disorder," Hotch says impatiently. "Jekyll deliberately created Hyde. He's responsible for his actions just as much as a drink driver is."

"We don't execute drink drivers."

"We don't let them get away with mowing people down, either."

"So they have to be punished?" He has the look of a man with his target in his sights and his finger on the trigger.

"They have to be prevented from hurting anyone else."

"So they can be rehabilitated," Reid says, because of _course_ he does. He'd be right in there trying to convince Hyde he didn't really want to beat that man to death, and he'd probably be doing it unarmed and without backup too.

"Reid, you know in the context of the novella that's just—"

"But that's my point: the author could have chosen to make it possible but instead he systematically removes any possibility of any solution that doesn't involve a... a murder-suicide."

"Because when you create something evil you have to accept the consequences of that."

With a stubborn grimace, Reid says, "So you think Jekyll deserves death because he turned himself into a murderer."

"Yes."

"Then by the same token Hyde deserves life because he keeps choosing to take the draught that turns him back into a philanthropist." He finishes this with satisfaction, sure in his rhetorical victory. Not that Hotch couldn't poke a baker's dozen holes in his logic. But it's a lost cause poking holes in the logic of a man who's cheerfully arguing the precise opposite of the premise he began with. This was never about the book. Or about Adam and Amanda. Reid's baiting him even as he holds him off, and he's enjoying himself just as much as...

As Hotch wants to. Screw professional ethics. Deliberately he looks down at Reid's crotch and deliberately up to the deep black of his eyes. "Have you had a concussion recently?" he asks drily.

"Not recently," he acknowledges, and gives Hotch the same once over. "You?"

For answer he steps forward until the skin of Reid's throat is taut with craning up at him. "You know even if I can't hit you, I can find other ways to... transfer kinetic energy." Reid's legs aren't quite together, nor quite apart. Hotch pushes his own leg between them.

Reid doesn't flinch, only nervously wets his lips. "Hotch," he says — gulps a breath — "g—go to hell."

His heart skips a dizzying beat; a heat suffuses every inch of his skin. The very distant analytical part of him realises this is another _demonstration_ but how and why and of what he can't tell. Reid's waiting, wide-eyed and breathless. Very carefully Hotch draws his leg back and tries to get himself under control, while more than ever he wants—

"Back off," Reid tells him.

He does, and even manages to strike the right note of neutrality when he asks, "What are you really doing here?"

Reid stands up and steps in close: closer than Hotch was to him a moment ago and yet maddeningly careful not to touch him. "Back off," he says again.

Hotch tries to glean meaning from the face so close he can't quite keep it in focus. "I did; you—"

"Back. Off."

He wins the battle to keep his breathing steady and loses the one to keep from swallowing. "No," he says, though it comes out as more of a question than he likes.

Reid nibbles at a frown. For a moment, ears buzzing, Hotch foolishly thinks he might win the faceoff after all. But then Reid asks, "Do— do you want me to go?"

It's an offer, not a bluff. And Hotch has never been much of a chess-player, but he can see enough steps ahead to know that pointing out the safewords were never meant for _him_ will only lead to an unwinnable argument. So, does he want—? No. No: not even not knowing what the hell kind of game Reid's playing. But he's not tame enough to admit it in so many words. "Wrong question," he says instead.

Reid smirks at that, because Reid's a brat. Then he doesn't say anything else until finally Hotch takes the step back, and then he follows again and repeats again, "Back off."

If he swayed forward even a fraction of an inch— Obediently he falls back again, heart hammering. And again, and again. It's a relief to fetch up against the half-wall because, face it, by now his knees could do with the extra support.

And again Reid steps up to him, toe to toe, chin to chin though usually Hotch has a good inch on him. Traps him there between the nervous catch of the breath on his face and the hard solidity of the wall at the back of his skull. The whiskey waiting behind it— Absurd thought, when the heat of Reid before him is intoxicating enough.

"So what else could he have done?" Reid asks.

What—? Oh: Jekyll. His head is spinning; with a great effort he makes himself think. "Flee. Leave society entirely. Go somewhere Hyde can't hurt anyone, because there's no-one to hurt."

"Or?"

He knows the answer Reid wants. Always has. Instead he says, "Fight. Admit to himself what he is. Kill the people who know. The police are only after Hyde because he was too disorganised, too easily identified. Jekyll would be more methodical. Hyde wouldn't need to come out, then."

Reid points out, "You don't mean that."

He knows the answer Reid wants. It's facile. But he's let himself be trapped here and doesn't want to escape — backed into a corner and doesn't want to fight. All he wants is... "Surrender. To... someone he trusts to control Hyde and make sure Jekyll comes back."

Reid finally steps back from him. His eyes are still heavily dilated, and his face flushed with triumph. (Hotch is feeling fairly flushed himself, and ready, as soon as he's alone...) Instead of turning straight to the door, though, he hesitates. "You know when I said 'go to hell', I wasn't offended by you, um, propositioning me."

Hotch swallows: just the memory of the rebuff and it's all he can do not to groan. "Well, no," he manages, "considering you worked hard enough to provoke me to it."

Reid smirks again. "I didn't have to work that hard," is his parting shot. He takes his glass on the way out.

When the door snibs behind him, Hotch peels himself off the wall. His knees are distinctly shaky, but they bear him up into the shower. Not a cold one, and definitely not a quick one.


	16. Chapter 16

And even after all that, even lying worn out and sated in bed, Hotch can't sleep. Can't even keep his eyes closed: every time he tries, they just fall open again and he finds himself staring up at the ceiling like there's something important he's forgotten to do.

There isn't. All there is is a glass sitting on the sideboard right outside his bedroom, waiting to be filled with whiskey. And it can keep on waiting as far as he's concerned. He can sleep without it. He does, every night they're on a case. He just... can't remember the last time he did in his own bed.

He feels faintly nauseous at the thought, which has to be psychosomatic. Maybe he drinks more than he should, but not enough to be getting withdrawal symptoms. And if he did, they'd be hitting while he was on a case, not when he got home days later. There's nothing physiologically wrong with him. He certainly doesn't need that drink.

He closes his eyes, again, and takes a deep breath in through his mouth. Lets it slowly out. If he has to wait out the sleepless night until his alarm clock goes off he will. He'll just lie here — with his eyes _shut_ , thank you — laying out the facts of a case the way he does when sleep eludes him in the field.

Foyet. In the wind and if the Marshals haven't caught him now with their road blocks and wanted posters... He said he'd be more famous than the BAU ever knew: so, how does he plan to achieve that fame? Not by resting on his laurels. He'll kill again, and the only questions are when and where.

Would he be narcissistic enough to return to Boston? Surely he wouldn't be so foolish. After his reign of terror there, the media coverage was through the roof. There can't be a single Bostonite who hasn't seen his mug shot.

His hometown? No: he'd see that as a step back. Take a cue from his "Eye of Providence" tag and head to Rhode Island? But surely that'd be too small for him too. He wants to grow his fame, which means going national. Chicago; New York City. Bigger is better. But how can he go bigger than that massacre on the bus that still haunts Hotch? There's a limit to how many people you can kill at once without resorting to long-distance weapons like a sniper's rifle or a bomb, and Foyet needs that rush of killing them personally, hearing them beg, seeing the fear in their eyes.

Needs the power, Hotch corrects himself, of holding their life in his hands and knowing they know it. He needs to dominate and control, as he controlled Tom Shaunessy, holding him to silence for ten years. Watching it eat him up as he drank himself to death—

Hotch remembers spotting the bottle when he went to visit. Remembers how sick he looked. Cirrhosis of the liver. Of all the ways to die — and Hotch has seen a lot — for some reason that's the one that will always leave him tossing and turning at night.

Except it's not 'for some reason'. It's for the same reason that everything comes back to. Because no-one ever said that Dad's drinking caused his liver cancer, but odds are good it didn't help. Because when Aaron found out he was sick (dying) he confronted him, and everything blew up, and—

He lets out a breath and deliberately skips the details.

—Because when he was sent away to boarding school, he read all Mom's breezy letters before he ripped them up, down to the last oh-so-casual _Your father's on another health kick, so nothing to drink for dinner today but water — not even a drop left in the house — of course Sean has his milk and taking great pride in the resulting moustache—_ and then scant hours later he was called out of his dorm and sat down and told—

Because it turns out there are two ways to kill yourself with alcohol. One is to keep drinking.

The other is to stop.

(The death certificate noted the heart attack, glossed over its cause. Nothing to tarnish Mom's precious reputation, or Sean's memory of the perfect father.)

Well, Hotch decides, looking up at the ceiling, if he's that far gone then he'd better not try to go the night without, had he? and if he's not then a little to help him sleep won't hurt.

His self-serving logic isn't usually this specious. But, when he pads out to pour it, two drinks are enough to settle his nerves and remind him how sleepy he really is, and what kind of self-respecting alcoholic would go to bed on only two drinks?

*

Reid doesn't bring him the article on Friday — but he doesn't go back to visit Adam Jackson either. Maybe he listened to Hotch. Maybe he realised for himself it was a hopeless quest. Maybe their... literary debate... helped him exorcise his demons. Either way, Hotch has to count it as a win.


	17. Chapter 17

Dealing with psychopaths murdering children is bad enough. When the psychopath is another child...

When they get back to Quantico, Jack is on a playdate (when did he get old enough for playdates?) but Haley arranges for Hotch to pick him up. She lets him stay for dinner, too, where Jack's happy chatter fills the gaps between their wistful silences. He hasn't told her what the case was about, but she even cedes to him the bedtime routine unasked and he realises she's guessed. If he ever self-righteously thought she didn't appreciate his job—

Well, he already knew he was a jackass.

*

In the end he gets back to his apartment barely before Reid arrives. For a moment, at the knock on the door, a great rebellion surges up and fills his head. He just wants to sit alone with a glass— He grits his teeth on it and calls "Come in," and Reid lets him (makes him) (the line is far from clear) forget it all in a flurry of fists.

"Get us some juice?" Reid says afterwards, in that liminal space where Hotch is still catching his breath and feeling his way back to reality, where it still feels easy and natural to just do what he says. When he brings the juice out, Reid is browsing his bookshelves. He takes the proffered glass with an abstracted thanks and turns another page.

Hotch watches him for a while, vaguely wondering why he hasn't left yet. "Did you want to talk about something?"

Reid glances up at him. "Not especially. You?"

"No."

Reid nods and goes back to leafing through the book he's appropriated. He doesn't appear fazed by Hotch's puzzled scrutiny, but ten or eleven pages later he says without looking up, "I just wanted to stay for a bit this time."

Which is a whole lot of minimisation for one small sentence that explains nothing. Hotch thinks about pushing it. Then he thinks about how pushing it has worked on Reid in the past. "Okay," he says instead, and sits back at his table with the evening's paperwork to wait him out.

He'd much rather be sipping whiskey than orange juice, though.

And Reid doesn't look like he's going to be waited out any time soon. He leaves the one book open on the shelf and pulls another one out. He pages forward and back in it, and he takes it to the sofa to settle in.

Hotch considers reflective surfaces and angles. They're not favourable to watching without being noticed in turn, so he keeps his head down and plugs away at the bureaucratic minutia that spawns when federal and local law enforcement liaise for even the briefest of moments. It's tedious work but simple enough, perfect for easing himself back to normality. Surreality comes first: how has he got to this, going in the course of an evening from a murder investigation to reading his son _Where is the Green Sheep_ to beating a man up to signing a mileage statement? But that's just how it is, and he's trying to accept that.

Another page, another sip. He grimaces at finding it juice still, sickly sweet. It's better for him than what he normally drinks, he reminds himself, and finishes it off. Maybe tonight he'll manage to get to sleep without the alcohol. Or, let's be realistic: less of it.

Reid shifts and hisses softly, then turns, sprawling the length of the sofa as if he's forgotten where he is.

"Shoes off the sofa," Hotch says to remind him.

"Sorry," Reid says reflexively, but only kicks his loafers off and turns another page.

Hotch stops writing and openly stares at the elbow sticking out over the arm of the sofa. He's pretty sure Reid would have mentioned if he'd been kicked out of his apartment. Or if he was being stalked. He knows for a fact Reid prefers to be alone after these sessions. Even now he's pretending to be as alone as is possible for someone who's just crashed uninvited on his boss's sofa.

He doesn't need to be here; he doesn't want to be here: he thinks he has to be.

Hotch puts his pen down with a snap. "I don't need you babysitting me."

Reid stills, then sits up again to meet his glare over the back of the sofa. "Hotch, you keep assuming that because you're hitting me I'm the only one that can get hurt, but we both know the worst part of an assault often isn't the pain or injury, it's the feeling of control being taken away. That's not an issue for me here because I'm the one in control, but for you—"

"That's enough," Hotch cuts in.

"I'm just saying, it's a lot more complicated—"

"And I'm saying stop, Reid! My mental wellbeing is none of your business. You come here, I hit you, you go home: that's it."

Reid presses his lips reluctantly closed and turns away again. In the black of the TV screen Hotch sees him bend to pull his shoes back on. He stands up — absently rubbing a bruise on his thigh — and asks, "Can I use your bathroom before I go?"

Hotch gives him a sour look. But he's angry, not spiteful: he nods permission in its general direction. While Reid heads for it he gets up to tidy his bookshelf and take the empty glasses to the sink.

He really wants that whiskey, he thinks as he passes it. Soon. His hands grip the pair of glasses: as soon as Reid's gone—

He stops at the sound of water. Not the flush of the toilet, not the running of the tap in the bathroom sink: it's the goddamned _shower_. He turns in disbelief and stares past his bedroom to the locked door. Goddamned _Spencer Reid_ , the pig-headed, manipulative son of a—

( _Remind you of anyone you know?_ )

The man is obsessed with diving into people's broken psyches to rescue them from themselves. As near as Hotch can figure, it comes from a childhood spent trying to manage the life and moods of his schizophrenic mother. Failing, mostly, because it's an impossible task for anyone, let alone a child. But, like that other Las Vegas addiction, just a few successes and the hope that this could be the big win were enough to set the habit for life.

But Hotch won't be that win. Because _his_ childhood was one long series of lessons not to expect rescue; not to court it; not to let slip any hint it might be needed. That would only upset Mom, and Dad would have none of that.

(And then he brought those habits to his marriage with the most warm and open woman he'd ever met. Oh, he tried, at least when things were easy. But the first sign of a rough patch and there he'd be stolidly ignoring it and making Haley guess at what was really going on inside his head. No wonder after all those years she's so good at it now.)

He shakes his head roughly. The shower is splattering in the irregular way that indicates someone moving under it, so he opens the whiskey bottle with four practised twists of the cap and sloshes some in his glass. He swallows a large mouthful and feels the burn of it prick at his eyes. Another four quick twists cap the bottle again, and he takes the glass into the kitchen for more leisurely consumption. Or to hide it under the sink if Reid comes out before he's finished: it's ended up more than half full.

What he needs to know is: why has Reid chosen _tonight_ to get overprotective? It can't be anything at work. Hotch mightn't be the life of the party but that's nothing unusual. Dave would have said something if he'd been letting the cracks show there.

It isn't anything that happened last time Reid visited, because nothing happened. Leave aside that "most arousing book discussion ever" is not a phrase he ever expected to apply to his life; innuendo aside, the visit was downright tame. He assumed — to the extent he thought about it — that Reid wanted a change of pace after the thorough thrashing Hotch had inflicted on him the time before....

The time that ended with Reid bringing juice out to where he sat in his car too shaken to drive: that time?

That time triggered because he was freaking out about using Reid's belt the time before. Does Reid think that could have been avoided if he'd stuck around afterwards? It's not an unreasonable hypothesis from a certain point of view, he admits, rolling another sip of whiskey around his mouth. It's just wrong. The truth is, things were already off. Starting with being surprised in the middle of a glass of whiskey.

He grips the glass tightly and knocks back another gulp. He can feel it numbing his tastebuds, making each sip that little less satisfying than the one before. It's better all the same than letting himself rehash the mess his life has become. Even if the whiskey is a large part of that mess.

At least Reid doesn't know about _that_ part. Probably. Hotch contemplates the dark golden glow in the glass and listens to the never-ending shower. (Another sip.) No: if Reid knew about it he'd be trying to fix it, and Hotch would know about that. (And another.)

Damn, but it'd almost be a relief if he did. If he stood in the doorway and said, _Hotch, stop,_ and Hotch could just put it down...

Another sip. Imaginary Reid isn't very effective. To be honest he doesn't think the real Reid would be much more useful: not without watching him every minute of the day, and that is so far beyond the bounds of what Hotch could allow— No. This is Hotch's problem to deal with. If only — another sip makes his mouth curl up — if only it were as simple as just telling himself...

It is, of course. It's not that easy, but it is that simple.

 _Stop,_ he thinks at the glass. It doesn't lift again, but it doesn't go away either. He may as well finish it off: there's barely an inch left. The surface of the whiskey ripples and he dimly remembers some months back when an inch would be more than he had in a week. He takes a halting step to the sink. "Stop," he murmurs aloud, and watches the glass hover there. He watches it slowly tip, watches it pour in one long, thin, yellow trickle down the drain.

Gone like so much piss.

He washes his mouth out with tapwater, and rinses the glass three times. For good measure he swishes the dishcloth around the sink. Then he leaves it all, dries his hands, and goes back to stare at his paperwork.

* 

A few minutes later Reid finally emerges. He hovers at a very safe distance, clothes rumpled and hair a haphazardly towel-dried mop.

Hotch puts his pen down again and waits. He doesn't think he looks as angry as he was before, unless the warmth of the alcohol is making itself evident. Mostly he just feels drained.

"Maybe I should have talked to you about it first," Reid admits.

"You think," Hotch says, but can't bring himself to much rancour.

"It's just that what we're doing is highly-charged and I—I think it's sensible to take some precautions."

Even the sting of that feather-smoothing is muted. "I understand that, and if you want to stay for half an hour as a precautionary measure I won't argue. But I need there to be a line. You're not here to fix me."

"I'm not trying to—" He stutters out under Hotch's gaze. "I don't think you're broken."

Hotch isn't sure he agrees, but he's hardly going to say so. "You're here so you can control how you experience the pain. I'm here so I can inflict it and know it's under control. Anything else is out of scope."

Reid yields ungrudgingly, if not eagerly. So that, at least, is settled: now only for the simple part.


	18. Chapter 18

There'd be nothing special about the case if it didn't come down to a car chase so close to the wire that Hotch has to end it with something less of a PIT manoeuvre and more of a controlled crash. It leaves his head spinning and ears ringing. _Not again_ , he thinks in an abyss of dread even as he waves the local detective beside him to go ahead after the UnSub.

In the event, the dizziness and tinnitus resolve on their own. He flies back with the rest of the team and gets to his apartment a little after ten. He's just started repacking his go-bag when there's a familiar knock on his door. "Seriously?" he says aloud. He may not be that badly hurt, and in fact he's riding an adrenaline high that's going to make it really hard to sleep, but he's still pretty sure that rough-and-tumbling with Reid is a bad idea.

But when he opens the door, Reid has his go-bag and a determined set to his jaw.

"What the hell's that for?" Hotch asks.

He gulps and says, "Um, staying overnight to monitor your symptoms?"

"Reid, we talked about this."

"No, sir, I, uh, don't think—"

Hotch narrows his eyes at that 'sir' and prevarication both. "We agreed last time you visited that it was for one purpose and one purpose only."

"Yes, sir," he says with a quick nod, "but we also agreed when this started that it wouldn't affect the team and right now I'm here as a member of the team just like you'd be there for any of us."

"Because I'm the _leader_ of the team, Reid. It's my job; it's not yours."

"Well, I—I just assumed you'd prefer one of us instead of Section Chief Strauss. Sir." He swallows again at the look Hotch gives him for that veiled threat, but lets it hang there anyway. And if Hotch ever thought he was stubborn about personal matters, he _knows_ how headstrong he can be about work.

Finally he checks, "You're _only_ here as one of my agents."

He nods quickly. "Yes, sir."

"Then you can call me 'Hotch' like I told you seven years ago," he says, and leaves him to close the door behind him.

While Reid settles in with his bookshelves, Hotch finishes repacking his own go-bag, throws the laundry in the machine ready to go tomorrow, and makes a quick inspection of bathroom and guestroom. He's just considering what he can dredge up for dinner when there's another knock at the door.

He comes out from the kitchen and looks across to Reid sitting wide-eyed on the sofa. Quietly he says, "I don't suppose you ordered pizza?"

Reid shakes his head and all but whispers, "I could go and..." He makes a vague gesture in the direction of hiding under the bathroom sink. Hotch raises his eyebrows. Sure, just like any of his agents would.

He gets the door while Reid wrestles a less deer-in-headlights look onto his face. Dave has not just his go-bag but also a brown paper bag bulging with groceries. He doesn't wait to be invited in, but pushes in past Hotch with a breezy, "You wouldn't think the queue at the store would be that long at ten at night," and drops his go-bag by the table on his way to the kitchen.

"Apparently ten at night is the new rush hour," Hotch says, still holding the door. "Should I just leave this open for the rest of the team?"

"What?" He sees Reid when he turns, and blinks. "Huh."

Reid blurts, "Head trauma recipients should be monitored overnight by a responsible adult for worsening of symptoms such as headaches, nausea, disorientation—"

"Great minds think alike," Dave puts in drily. "So, what's your stance on cilantro?"

"Um, it's okay, but I—I've already eaten so— and you'll probably be better at, uh..."

"Keeping me in line?" Hotch suggests in a studiedly bland voice.

Reid emits a faint squeak of protest. He grabs his go-bag, then remembers the book in his other hand and turns again to stick it back on the shelf. He doesn't forget to tell Dave, "Um, he should be woken every few hours—"

"I've got it," Dave assures him.

Hotch lets him flee and snibs the door behind him. "You know first thing Monday I'm firing both of you," he tells Dave.

"Good, no change in irritability levels then."

"Maybe because I didn't actually hit my head."

"I know," Dave says as if to humour him, "you just rattled your brain around in there a bit. Now, you carry on doing what you were doing and I'll cook us some pasta."

"I _was_ just about to heat some spaghetti in a can," he says peevishly.

"Aaron, I'm going to let that pass because you've got a head injury."

Pique aside, no-one in their right mind would turn down Dave's cooking. Hotch is allowed to chop the mushrooms and tomatoes, and the apartment soon smells like heaven. They even set the table properly, albeit Dave fills their wine glasses with water.

A few deeply satisfying mouthfuls in Dave says, "So, how'd Reid convince you to let him in?"

Hotch gives a sour snort. "Threatened to tell Strauss on me."

"Hah. Kid's got grit," Dave says approvingly.

"You've no idea," he mutters. Which is foolish (he can only blame the head injury) because now he has to explain it. But there are plenty of innocuous stories about Reid after all. Like that time he performed a magic trick for a paranoid schizophrenic UnSub holding everyone in a train carriage hostage. And that time he confronted a delusional UnSub wearing a bomb vest. And that time he played Russian roulette with an UnSub suffering from dissociative personality disorder, and won....

By now they've both finished their pasta and made serious inroads on the leftovers. "I'm sensing a theme," Dave says. He stands up and heads for the sideboard, because sure. What are friends for if not depleting your whiskey?

"You hadn't already noticed?" Hotch asks. "Pour me one of those while you're at it."

"Not on a concussion, you don't," Dave scolds. "I guess it's just more impressive when you line them all up."

"No, they're pretty impressive individually," he says in all fairness. "Once you've got your heartrate back down." He drinks the last of the water in his wine glass on the off-chance it'll have some kind of placebo effect. It doesn't. "I'd better hit the sack, anyway. There's a spare room if you _must_ stay."

It's well past time for bed. He's finally starting to feel wearied from the long day and the adrenaline spike. He trudges to the bathroom and makes his shower hotter and longer than usual in the hopes his muscles will thank him for it in the morning. Between that and a damn good meal he should be sleepwalking by now. Instead his thoughts are churning at seventy-five miles per hour, and largely centre on that whiskey he's been cheated out of by his overbearing mother hen of a friend.

(Simple isn't easy. He's tried. Clearly not very hard, because what could be easier than _not_ doing something? All the same, he's managed on a few nights to have... if not none then less. While on other nights...)

He lies heavily in bed and listens as Dave finishes up with the dishes and takes his own turn in the bathroom. The shower turns on and he remembers Reid's last visit. Dave won't take as long in there, he knows, and drags himself up to make the most of the opportunity. A mug from the kitchen, a splash from the bottle — only a splash; he _is_ trying to cut back and besides, he doesn't want Dave to notice the level changing if he decides on a nightcap—

What is he _thinking_? Dave was working in behavioural science when Hotch was struggling with cursive. He can smell a whiskey at twenty paces and Hotch already knows he's going to be checking on him in the middle of the night. One whiff will tell the whole story and if he thinks being mother-henned tonight is bad—

His heart pounding as if he's already been caught, he washes his splash down the kitchen sink and takes the mug full of water back to his bedside table instead. He lies in bed again and tells himself: He's on a case. One of his agents is in the next room. He's going to sleep. He's on a case and he's perfectly fine, just like a good Hotchner boy, and he's going to...

*

He wakes to light piercing his eyelids. He throws a hand up to protect them (his neck, stiffening from yesterday's whiplash, protests the movement) and grumbles, "Oh, piss off."

"How many fingers?" Dave asks unsympathetically.

"Four," he guesses with his eyes still closed. But Dave _will_ call an ambulance on him if he's wrong, so he squints across the room at him. He's right.

"Date?"

"Sunday, May third, 2009," he says grudgingly, assuming Dave's at least let him sleep past midnight. "The President's Obama. Detective Quinn and I were in pursuit of Ian Coakley, I deliberately crashed into his car to stop him hitting Garrett Burke, and I did _not_ hit my head or lose consciousness."

"Your pupils look okay," Dave allows. Departing from the set questions, possibly because Hotch just answered them all by rote, he asks, "When did Reid start looking out for you?"

He lets out a breath, as if he has to think about it at all. "Probably Chester Hardwicke's custodial. Wednesday, April second, 2008," he adds, because there's no point pretending he doesn't remember the date he signed the marital settlement agreement.

"I thought that custodial was a bust."

"It was. Hardwicke only wanted us there so he could murder us and delay his execution. I was willing to give as good as I got, Reid had the sense to de-escalate the situation with a thirteen-minute monologue on the developmental psychology of sexual sadists. Happy?"

"Disappointed I missed it," Dave says, but he turns the light off again and leaves Hotch to get back to sleep.

Thinking: a year, a month, and a day since he first punched Reid in the gut. It's all very well to compartmentalise, and to act like they've got nothing to hide, and to rely on the sheer unlikeliness of the whole proceedings to shield them. But they practically live with a whole team of profilers. How long can they really keep this a secret?


	19. Chapter 19

When he brings it up Reid says, "I actually think the longer we keep it a secret the less the chance of discovery."

"How do you figure that?" Hotch says in disbelief. Reid of all people understands probability theory: "Every time we roll the dice we have the same chance of making a mistake."

"I don't think that's the right analogy. It's more like cards, and we're not shuffling between games. We learn from our mistakes and don't make them again. And if they were going to notice a change in our attitude towards each other it would have been at the start. By now they've already rationalised any changes and just accept them as part of who we are. If you think about it," he says, signalling his trump, "they're more likely to notice something's up if we stop."

"That's a little coercive," Hotch points out.

"It's true."

"Okay, it's a lot coercive."

Reid purses his mouth in unconcern. "Is that a problem?"

He looks away. The truth is he doesn't _feel_ coerced, he feels settled. Which is its own kind of manipulation, one skating very close to the line he told Reid not to cross. But the truth is if he wanted to stop these visits he'd have just said so. (The truth is he knows if they stop it'll just be him and the whiskey.) "Wrong question," he admits at last.

Reid steps in close. "I, um— I'm going to need you to say it."

Reid doesn't need a damn thing: he just wants to make him. And will, in the end. Hotch meets his eyes steadily and says, "It's not a problem."

"You like it."

He refuses to look away again, though his words do his dodging for him. "Within limits."

"When you let me in here," Reid specifies, "you like me to tell you to start, and you like me to tell you to stop. And at least to those ends you like me to push you, and manipulate you, and coerce you. Don't you?"

There isn't a word he can quibble with. "Yes. I like... all those things."

"Hit me."

He does, and likes that even better.

*

And thirty-six hours and one anthrax attack later he's bringing a bottle of orange juice into a hospital ward.

"Hotch!" Reid says in a pleased voice, struggling to push himself up: "Is that juice?"

"Hey, kid," Morgan scolds him, "what'd the doctor say about sitting up?"

As he reluctantly subsides Hotch explains, "Well, Morgan said you were asking for jello, but I figured the hospital would have that covered, so..." Sure enough a pair of empty jello cups are sitting by his bed where Hotch sets the juice.

"It's perfect, thanks."

Morgan leaves them to it, hopefully to head home for some sleep after spending the night in a hospital chair.

"So," Hotch says, "how are you feeling?"

"Um, kind of achy and tired but not bad considering."

Sure: considering he nearly died of an aggressive strain of anthrax. He has the calm, faintly triumphant look he generally wears after Hotch has beaten him to a pulp. Like two nights ago. The hospital gown seems to be covering the results of that, but—

"Morgan didn't see anything," Reid says. "He wanted to stay with me after I got out of Brown's house, but I had to strip for decontamination so I said did he really want to see me naked."

And Morgan left less because he wanted not to see than because he saw Reid didn't want to be seen, and thought it nothing more than body-shame. Reid grew up covering for his mother's illness: he thinks nothing of this kind of minor manipulation. Nor does Hotch, when it comes to it.

"Pour me some juice?" Reid says.

Hotch lifts his eyebrows teasingly as he complies.

"I didn't mean—" Reid starts, and stops. Hotch glances at him ready to tease some more, but his eyes are on the doorway where a doctor with a clipboard is stepping in. "Um, hi?"

"Sorry to interrupt," she says pleasantly, and tells Hotch, "I just need a few minutes with Doctor Reid."

Reid frowns. "I don't know you."

"Doctor Coral Skaletsky," she says with a practised lift of her ID tag. "Doctor Kimura asked me for a consult. It won't take long, sir," she adds to Hotch, moving further in to make room for him to leave. "Coffee's just down the hall if you'd like."

He doesn't move. She may act like she's who she says she is, but he agrees with Reid: she's being cagey, they don't recognise her name, and the entire anthrax attack is strictly classified. "I'm afraid we'll have to confirm your authorisation before Reid can talk with you, Doctor Skaletsky."

She smiles in understanding. "It's okay, I won't be examining him or asking about anything classified. Again, sir, it'll just be a few minutes."

Nothing classified should leave nothing to talk about. He catalogues her gaze: calm, and non-threatening, and implacable, and circumspect— He's been in her place, he realises with a feeling like a fist in the gut, more times than he can count. This isn't about the anthrax. She's here to oh-so-tactfully talk to Reid about domestic violence.

Reid's come to the same conclusion. "It's okay, Hotch."

It really, really isn't. But he hands over the plastic cup half-filled with juice and says, "I'll be back at the BAU."

"No, I still need to talk to you."

"Reid—" But arguing is impossible without either giving everything away or acting like the abuser desperate not to give everything away. "Fine," he says, and escapes to the corridor. Doctor Skaletsky closes the door behind him.

*

He finds the coffee machine where she promised. Reid will try to talk his way out of it, but the problem is there really isn't any other plausible explanation for bruises like the ones Hotch inflicted on him two nights ago. Let alone, likely enough, the faded remnants of the ones from two weeks ago. Injuries like that don't happen by accident—

("I was messing around on the stairs." But that only works when you did in fact fall (were in fact something between pulled and thrown) down a flight of stairs. Or when the doctor and nurse and x-ray technician aren't really that suspicious to start with because everyone knows your father's a pillar of the community.)

—And a combative suspect would never be so very careful to only hit where no-one would see. And sparring opponents meet face-to-face: strikes to the back would be few and accidental, nothing like Hotch's methodical, unrelenting blows.

Which leaves a stubborn silence. Which leaves it in the medical records. Which ends up, in some form or other, in a report to the Bureau. Which Hotch can't— He _can't_ use his position to sweep it under the rug. 

He was never meant to end up here. _Reid_ was never meant to end up here. But Hotch is the one who's spent his entire adult life determined not to be the monster and yet here—

A knock on the doorframe catches him still staring at the options on the coffee machine. "He's all yours," Doctor Skaletsky says easily, and carries on her way.

*

Reid looks downright smug when he returns. "I told you it was okay."

Hotch gives him a long look, then closes the door to be sure they're not overheard. "What the hell did you tell her?"

Reid's smile slides away at his tone. He returns Hotch's gaze, then looks down at the inch left of juice in his plastic cup. "I need more juice."

"We're not in my apartment, Reid."

"Fine, then if you're just my boss right now then my conversation with Doctor Skaletsky was in confidence."

"Don't get smart."

"I'm actually kind of tired right now but if the others want to visit later th— that'd be nice." He reaches angrily to set the cup on the bedside table, but he misjudges the edge and in his fumbling both cup and juice end up on the floor. "Damnit—"

" _Don't_ sit up," Hotch says. He grabs a handful of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall. He picks up the cup first, then sets to mopping up the juice. For not a lot of liquid it's managed to cover an impressive amount of linoleum.

"Say— Say you're sorry."

He jerks his head up. Reid's watching him — down there on one knee — with lips parted anxiously, eyes glittering in anticipation. Half nerves, all nerve: of _course_ he planned this. The fumbling misdirect is his stock in trade — and this time it's in aid of making Hotch kneel and apologise.

He should be annoyed, a detached part of him thinks, or possibly furious. After all they're not in his apartment — but he's not just Reid's boss right now either, and once again he finds all the irritation from half a minute ago has dissolved into a calm trust. "I'm sorry," he says (down there on one knee). (It's possibly the easiest an apology has come from his lips in his life.) "I was upset, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"Okay," Reid says, and settles with satisfaction back into his pillow.

Hotch feels a smile tugging at the corner of his own mouth and looks down to indulge in it. When he's wiped up the last of the juice he can reach, he stands up to bin the sodden towels. "So... did you still want that juice?"

"Yes, please." When Hotch is pouring it he says, "I just told her the truth, that I've got a, um, consensual sadomasochistic arrangement with someone I trust and we've taken plenty of measures to keep it safe so there's no reason anyone else needs to worry about it."

Hotch screws the top of the juice back on and hands him the cup while he digests that. "She was really okay with that?"

"She was, yeah."

He looks back at the juice bottle. Briefly he considers pouring himself some, but Reid's intervention's been pretty effective in settling him. Watching him from the side of his eye he admits, "I realise it's not fair on you to have to keep hand-holding me through this."

Reid sips his juice thoughtfully. "I'm not really holding your hand. I think sometimes you just need to hear that I'm okay."

"Well, I'll try to do a better job of listening," he says, which gets a judicious nod. "And I'll let the others know to come by after you've had a rest."


	20. Chapter 20

He takes an impromptu personal day to look after Jack when Haley has a job interview. He's the last resort after all other options fail — the babysitter sick, Jessica at a tech conference, their Mom taking care of their Dad after his knee operation — but he'd have leapt at the chance anyway. The job hunt has, undeservedly but unsurprisingly, been slow going. She doesn't have the recent experience they all want: how could she? She had to quit one job when Hotch was assigned to Seattle, and another five months in when he came back for the BAU. After the next hard-won job ended thanks to last-in-first-out, he pointed out that they didn't really need the extra money and besides, weren't they meaning to have kids some day anyway?

He made her financially dependent on him as surely as if he'd been trying. One day of babysitting (parenting, even) is the least he can do for her now.

Close on half past three, he hears her car pull up the drive and goes out to warn her Jack's still napping. When she gets out his heart skips a beat: he hasn't seen her so radiantly happy in _years_. It takes several seconds to remember to breathe again. "So, should I congratulate you now, or..."

"I don't want to jinx it," she says quickly — "but it's got to be a good sign when you actually enjoy the interview, right?"

"I'd say so," he agrees. Three years ago he'd have hugged her. A year ago he'd have ached that he couldn't share in the joy. Now... he yearns, and probably always will, but he's content too to just bask in it from this distance.

She looks up at Jack's bedroom window. "Let me guess, you just got him down for his nap."

"No," he says. "No, I got him down at one thirty on the dot. ...Then I went to get a coffee and came back up to the study to do some paperwork..."

"Ah," she says, wise in the way of almost-four-year-olds.

"Well, I wrote about half a page before I heard this knocking in the chest—"

"Wait, he was in the _chest_?"

"Lying on his back with a flashlight. So I asked him" (more laughing than stern) "what he was doing there, and he said, 'I help you work the case, Dad.'"

"So then you put him back to bed," Haley says, but she's more laughing than stern too.

"He really wanted to help me work the case," he justifies himself. "And he turns out to be really good at writing reports." (Five pages of chicken scratch. But the margins on that chicken scratch are faultless.)

"Okay," she concedes. "Give me a copy of his report and I'll let this one slide."

He knows a good deal when he hears one. "Done."

(Is it possible that one day they might just be friends, without all these regrets and might-have-beens between them?)

He plucks up his courage and says, "There's something I've been going over in my head for a while now, just... to know. And it occurred to me, instead of doing that, maybe I could just ask...."

"There's a novel idea," she says wrily.

He's made her nervous. He's nervous himself, or perhaps bone-deep terror is a better way to describe this. But she's not stopping him, and if he chickens out now he'll always wonder— "When you left..." He _cannot_ pause to let himself think, or feel. With a steadily neutral cadence he asks, "Why not just kick me out? Did you pack your bags and go because that's what I always did to you and Jack, or were you afraid I'd... fight it?"

"Oh, babe." She takes a step towards him, and stops. Corrects herself: "Aaron. Of course you'd have _fought_ it, but I wasn't afraid of that. I was afraid I'd let you win."

The raw anguish on her face is impossible to disbelieve — as impossible as he finds it to believe that, of all his sins, _that_ isn't one of them. But he asked the question. He owes it to her to listen to the answer.

"You're not your father," she says in a low, firm voice.

He looks quickly down. Makes himself nod and, when he can be sure of himself, says, "Thank you."

Such a featherweight phrase. But her answering "Yeah" is barely a breath, and yet it carries all the meaning in the world.

*

If emotional catharsis worked in real life like it did in the movies he could pour the whiskey down the sink and get on with his life. Or stand up in front of a dozen strangers and say, "Hi, my name's Aaron—" Problem solved.

He snorts at himself. Catch him admitting anything to a bunch of strangers without half a dozen stiff ones in him. He does this alone or not at all.

Sometimes the day is so busy and he gets home (...'home'?) so late he can convince himself he's really on a case where whiskey doesn't belong. Or Reid comes by, and Hotch throws him against the wall and pounds him until he hears the word _Stop_ , and clings to that feeling until he's asleep.

Sometimes the day goes less well, and by evening he's antsy and getting antsier. He thinks of calling Reid, but it's only been three days and Reid is not in fact his personal punching bag. Warm milk and a hot shower are singularly useless soporifics and really, what does it _matter_ if he has one or two — or a little more — so long as he stops before it gets into hangover territory?

Which he does, mostly. He may not be making any noticeable net progress, but he's still perfectly _functional_.

And then sometimes the day—

Eighty-nine pairs of shoes in a feedbin on a pigfarm.

Sometimes the day just—

The jet is stiflingly silent on the long haul back to Quantico, and all he can think of is how much whiskey is left in the bottle, and whether it's humanly possible to finish it off before passing out.

Because sometimes the day just needs to end already.

Reid turns in his seat and catches his eye with a somber and wordless question. Without answering Hotch turns his own head away to stare out into the black night sky. It won't help. Not tonight, not in this mood. Tomorrow, maybe — if he's not in hospital getting his stomach pumped. And how would his team then, already reeling from today's horrors, cope with his failure to cope?

Tomorrow, then, and let the dread thought of Reid finding him hungover or worse keep him from drinking more than a glass or two on the way to bed tonight. It's well past time he gets a handle on this. Cold turkey is out of the question without medical attention it's worth his career to seek, but he can get serious about a plan to cut down, and then he can stick to the goddamned thing.

He can see the days of struggle stretching out before him in all their grueling tedium. But when it comes down to it, it's always been about what he wants, and what he wants more. He wanted to stay with Haley and Jack, but he wanted to stay with the BAU more. He wanted to eschew violence, but he wanted to surrender to his urges more. And now his body thirsts for the golden waters of Lethe, but his soul aches all the more to see his team safe out of this hell of a case. To be once again the leader they deserve.

He surveys them in their seats, world-worn and weary, lost in thoughts that might be near as dark as his own. When did any of them last sleep? Reid is facing forward again, but shifts to listen when Hotch speaks: "I want everyone to take the day off tomorrow."

He gets bleak nods and no disagreement. "You too," Dave says.

"Oh yeah. I plan to sleep to at least eight o'clock."

"Ten," Reid counters.

("Noon," Prentiss raises before the silence swallows them all again.)

And it's settled. He'll go home (apparently it's home now), have two glasses and eight hours sleep, answer the door and haul Reid inside — toss him to the floor — kick him when he tries to get up — when he stops trying, heave him up by belt and collar and throw him over the back of the sofa—

Not on the jet, he reminds himself. But at home — tomorrow — that's another matter.


End file.
